A trip to the Bahamas and another to a resort in Florida, stops at high end restaurants and time at Top Golf – these are among the purchases made using the procurement card assigned to the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office in fiscal 2025.

According to the State Comptrollers Office, it is the responsibility of department heads to oversee the use of their state issued procurement credit lines, or P-cards. A review of spending records obtained by the Herald show the card or cards assigned to Sheriff Steven Tompkins’ office were used to spend at least $133,282.09 in fiscal 2025.

Tompkins was arrested and charged with a pair of felonies related to an alleged extortion scheme on Friday while in Florida. The Sheriff’s Office did not return a request for comment on why the sheriff was in Florida.

However, a review of the Department’s spending shows it’s not the first trip to the Sunshine State that Tompkins or someone else within his department made over the course of the last fiscal year.

What the data shows

Among the earliest transactions in the fiscal 2025 spending records released to the Herald are a pair of expenses for Mohegan Sun, the casino resort located in Connecticut. According to state records, the sheriff’s office P-card account was used to twice spend $143.75 there in July of last year, and once more for $724.70 in October.

The next month, August, the taxpayers were billed $5,329.95 for five transactions labeled as for The Drury Inn, in New Orleans, Louisiana. The Drury Plaza Hotel, as it’s officially called, is found “in the heart of the Big Easy, just steps from the French Quarter, Bourbon Street, Canal Street, the Riverwalk, Caesar’s Superdome, and Smoothie King Center.”

While there, someone spent $668.31 at the Creole House Restaurant & Oyster Bar.

Also in August, the card was used to send $500 to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, and for $179.55 worth of goods from Luberto’s Pastry Shop in Revere. Later that same month, bookings at the Hyatt Regency in New Orleans cost the taxpayers $5,405.25 across four transactions.

September of 2024 started off with a $901.20 purchase from Davio’s Northern Italian Steakhouse in the Seaport. It must have been a decent experience, because the card was used there the following April for another transaction worth $254.72.

October saw a pair of room reservations made at $757.36 each at Caesar’s Paris Las Vegas Hotel & Casino, with an additional $30.08 spent at the “casino front desk.”

Five days later $303.82 was spent on each of two rooms at the Courtyard Lenox Berkshires, in Lenox, and five days after that $106.12 was charged for each of two transactions at the Sturbridge Host Hotel & Conference Center. $280.60 more was charged in Sturbridge the following day.

In November 2024, the Sheriff’s Office spent $1,787.95 on their P-Card at Top Golf in Canton. They clearly had a good time, because they spent another $1,787.95 there the next month in December. Also in November, $6,515.25 was spent at the five-star Liberty Hotel in Boston.

The New Year saw a pair of transactions at a Marriott hotel in Washington D.C. worth a total of $2,101.02.

On various dates in March, April, and May of 2025, the P-card was used for eight transactions with the Diplomat Resort in Hollywood, Florida, totaling $3,847.65. The hotel is “the ultimate South Florida luxury resort,” according to the company’s description of its property.

Also in March, five transactions of $548 were made at the Harbor View Hotel — another five-star experience — in Edgartown on Martha’s Vineyard, totaling $2,490 in spending. Around the same time, the Hyatt Regency in Baltimore, Maryland was booked on the P-card through five transactions totaling $2,841.99.

In April, the P-card was used to spend $922.00 at The Pearl South Bay, a seafood restaurant in Dorchester.

Weeks later, the card was used for six transactions at the Margaritaville Beach Resort, in Nassau, Bahamas. That trip cost the taxpayers $6,525.09, of which $1,985.76 is labelled as for “eating places, restaurants.”

The state’s rules on P-card expressly call out and forbid using the card for “cost of meals, snacks, or coffee (whether during travel or otherwise).”

Despite that, in fiscal 2025 the sheriff’s office P-card was used to spend $2,194.00 at the Brockton Meat Market, $2,000 on a caterer called “Everybody Gotta Eat;” $890.67 at various Dunkin Donuts locations in Boston and Brockton;  $158.36 and $184.22 in two transactions at Felcaro Pizzeria; and three transactions of $225.63, $155.55, and $92.07 at the Andrew Square House of Pizza.

The card was also used to spend $9,424.77 on JetBlue airfare and flight upgrades, $6,108.26 on Delta flights and upgrades, $10,026.10 on various purchases with Amazon, and $6,217.80 twice for Zoom business services.

Tompkins is due in federal court in Boston on Friday. He remains the Sheriff of Suffolk County despite his indictment and also serves as chairman of the Roxbury Community College Board of Trustees.

His office did not return a request for an explanation of their spending.