‘Where is the money?’ Ex-homeowners seeking leftover funds from sheriff’s sales are being stonewalled.

Phyllis West shuffled down a long hallway in City Hall, breathing heavily as she pushed a walker outfitted with two tennis balls so it would glide across the floor.

West, 69, a recent retiree with poor eyesight, wasn’t thrilled about having to trek to Center City on a hot July morning from her sister’s home in Montgomery County, where she now lives.

But the Philadelphia Sheriff’s Office was making it difficult for her to claim about $20,000 in excess funds from when her North Philly home was auctioned off at a sheriff’s sale a few years ago. That is the amount that was left over after the payment of back taxes, utility bills, and other expenses.

The office had not responded to West since February, and her lawyer had to file a motion in Common Pleas Court just to see the financial records from the sale.

The petition landed on the desk of Judge Anne Marie Coyle, who granted a hearing but added a handwritten condition to her order: West “must appear” in person.

In court, the city relented. West would get the records she was seeking and money she was owed.

Last month, West finally received a check for $23,111 — four years after her house was sold.

“It’s almost like it’s not real to the sheriff, people finding out they are entitled to money,” said West, a former unit director at JFK Behavioral Health Center, who lost her home after a bout of severe depression left her unable pay her bills.

Under the Pennsylvania Code, sheriffs are supposed to distribute the proceeds from such sales within 40 days. The former homeowner is due any excess money when the property is sold for an amount larger than the past-due mortgage, and any unpaid taxes and utilities.

The Philadelphia’s Sheriff Office, which has been plagued for decades by scandal and corruption, states on its website that it “aggressively” searches for those owed money to “put a check in their hands.”

“The success of this program is having a real impact on real people,” the website asserts.

But staffers for Sheriff Rochelle Bilal, who was elected in 2019 as a reformer, continue to stonewall former property owners who come forward seeking their money.

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“It’s not brain science. If a dollar comes in and 50 cents goes to the city, what happened to the 50 cents due to Ms. West?” asked her lawyer, David Denenberg. “Where is the money? Why is it a secret? What is there to hide?”

Denenberg delved into the issue during the COVID lockdown in 2020 when courts were closed. His office is now full of hundreds of case files from former homeowners who were never paid.

The average payout in cases he’s pursued is $25,000 to $35,000, but he handled one case in which $100,000 was left over after a sheriff’s sale. It can take up to two years to pry the money loose from the Sheriff’s Office. Denenberg contends that the unclaimed funds total in the millions of dollars.

“They don’t want to tell you what’s out there,” he said.

Tallying the money is difficult, if not impossible.

Last year, a performance audit conducted by then-City Controller Rebecca Rhynhart found that the Sheriff’s Office had failed to follow rudimentary accounting practices under Sheriff Jewell Williams, who served as sheriff from 2012 until 2019 when he was voted out of office amid several sexual harassment lawsuits.

The sloppy accounting practices continued at least through Bilal’s first year in office, according to the audit. Rhynhart’s team had to issue subpoenas in November 2020 because office staff had not produced requested financial records pertaining to sheriff’s sales.

“[T]he Sheriff’s Office is operating outside of the checks and balances established in the Home Rule Charter meant to protect taxpayer funds from mismanagement or misuse,” according to the audit, which found that office staff was inadequately documenting revenue generated by sheriff’s sales, withholding fees that were supposed to be sent to the city, and “indiscriminately spending” money from the sales.

A Bilal spokesperson did not respond to The Inquirer’s repeated requests for comment for this article.

Nathaniel Terrell didn’t know his father had been struggling to pay his taxes until after he died in 2018. His home in the city’s Logan section was sold at a sheriff’s sale to pay the amount owed.

It was only when Denenberg later dug into the court file that Terrell learned of $25,000 that was supposed to come back to him. It took about two years of fighting the sheriff to collect the money, Terrell said.

“This probably happens to dozens, or hundreds of people,” said Terrell, who received a check in February. “This money was never returned to them. Something needs to be done about this.”

Terrell, who lives in East Mount Airy, said former property owners could use that leftover money as they try to rebuild their lives after losing their home.

“That could be life-changing money,” he said.

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This problem goes back decades.

In 2011, then acting-Sheriff Barbara Deeley announced that the office had located about $56 million in 13 bank accounts — and about half of it was owed to former property owners who had lost their homes to tax sales and foreclosures.

“Today,” Deeley said at the time, “the Philadelphia Sheriff’s Office takes the next step on the road to restoring the public’s confidence in our real estate division.”

The money had piled up under previous Sheriff John Green, who pleaded guilty in 2019 to taking $675,000 in bribes and kickbacks while in office.

Bilal, who organized a fundraiser-party for Green as he was preparing to head to federal prison, had pledged to begin reforming the office when she took over in 2020.

But Brett Mandel, Bilal’s first chief financial officer, was fired in February 2020, only five weeks into the job, after he questioned Bilal’s “off-budget” spending from what he described as a “slush fund” with little oversight.

“The next thing I know, I was walked out of there by some guys with big guns,” said Mandel, who later filed a whistleblower lawsuit that the city settled for about $465,000, including legal fees.

Mandel said recently that he did not understand why the process of distributing excess funds to former property owners remained so inefficient.

“It’s not like they’re sitting on money owed to some horrible corporation that’s polluting our water,” he said. “It’s owed to people who had some really tough times and couldn’t pay their bills.”

Other sheriff’s offices are more proactive about distributing the money and transparent about what money might be available.

In Montgomery County, for instance, the sheriff’s office has a lieutenant who is particularly adroit in tracking down former homeowners. He recently found one in Amsterdam and transferred the excess funds.

“We want to settle up these cases and get people the money they deserve and close it out on our end,” said Joseph Walsh, the solicitor for the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office.

In Delaware County, the sheriff’s office scans the distribution sheets into the court docket, so anyone can see how the funds from sheriff’s sales were spent, and whether money is left over, said John McCann, an office spokesperson.

“If they reach out to us, then we order a check to give the homeowner,” McCann said.

Walsh said those sheets are also considered public record in Montgomery County.

In 2013, the state Office of Open Records, in an appeal involving the Philadelphia Sheriff’s Office, ruled that distribution sheets are, in fact, public record under the Right to Know Law.

Yet, in Denenberg’s experience, Bilal’s staff does not produce the distribution sheets upon request. He said he does not receive the records unless he initiates litigation.

“I have to sue them,” Denenberg said.

After three years, unclaimed money from sheriff’s sales is supposed to be transferred to the state treasury. Before Bilal took office, that money was first transferred to City of Philadelphia accounts, then later to the state. A spokesperson for the Law Department said that, under Bilal, the policy changed, and the money now remains in the Sheriff’s Office until it is sent to the state.

Alexandra Hunt, who ran unsuccessfully for city controller in this year’s Democratic primary, tried cornering Bilal in May to get answers about the money. Bilal had little to say.

“Email the Sheriff’s Office,” she said. “There’s a process.”

Hunt said recently that she’d researched the issue while running her campaign and found that some people who were owed money, mostly poor or working class, “just give up” because the process is so onerous.

“I’ve spoken to folks that got caught up in this and they were so confused,” Hunt said. “They were told they weren’t filing the right papers, and they can’t afford a lawyer, so they didn’t know how to get their money back.”

The sheriff’s website, under the heading “Getting Results,” refers to an “interactive chart to the left” that people can hover over to see how much money has been returned to ex-homeowners since 2012.

There is no chart.

As for money that Bilal’s office might have transferred to the state, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Treasury was not immediately able to provide a tally this week of how much unclaimed money can be tracked to Philadelphia sheriff’s sales.

Thomas Morini, 64, sat on a bench at Independence Mall in August and tried to figure out his next move. His house in Kensington was foreclosed on two years ago after he and his late wife had racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills and fell behind on the mortgage. He’d been living with friends, then in a shelter.

In January, Morini said, he received a letter from the Sheriff’s Office informing him that he was owed $8,713.24 in excess funds from the sale. He showed his wife’s death certificate to them, as requested, but was never able to get any answers on when he would receive the money.

With those funds, Morini said, he was planning to move to California, possibly to live with relatives.

“I could get out of here,” he said about the funds. “Pay some rent up front and get some furniture, things like that.”

But when he went to the sheriff’s office, he couldn’t get any answers. He described the staff as “nasty and rude.”

“I get the same runaround and no answer,” he said.

When Morini went back to the office more recently, they gave him a different letter that says the balance he is due is “TBD” — to be determined. After seven months, he’s basically given up.

“I don’t think I’ll get a penny,” he said.

Meanwhile‚ Denenberg continues to pursue the money the Sheriff’s Office is still holding. He’s not optimistic that the office will streamline the process anytime soon, and he questions where all the interest is going on the unclaimed funds.

Mandel, Bilal’s former chief financial officer, said: “It’s bizarre as anything. This was one of the things she said she was going to fix.”