Tobacco, jewelry, more charges found on MATA's credit card

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Thousands spent at Target, Amazon and Best Buy. Thousands more in catering and dinners.

WREG investigators found some interesting charges on the Memphis Area Transit Authority’s executive credit cards including a tobacco shop and a local jewelry store.

We uncovered eight years worth of monthly credit card statements detailing just how MATA was spending your taxpayer money.

► Part One of this series: MATA credit cards show thousands spent on domestic, international travel

We asked for these credit card statements back in September when MATA announced it was in a $60 million dollar deficit and again this year. With help from the Reporter’s Committee for the Freedom of the Press, MATA turned them over per the Tennessee Records Act.

Since 2017, you can see the number of food-related charges we tallied drastically spiked in 2022 and 2023. The totals include dinners as well as catering bills.

We saw more than $4,600 spent at Chick-fil-A, $1,200 at Panera, and around $2,900 at Torchys.

Thousands more was spent at Subway and Pizza shops.

Hundreds more were spent on dinners, some charged on the former Deputy C.E.O. and former interim C.E.O. Bacarra Mauldin’s card at Folk’s Folly Prime Steakhouse, Fancy’s Fish House, and Coastal Fish.

Other charges we found include $5,600 dollars between December 2017 through 2024 just for flowers.

Thousands more were spent at Target, Best Buy, Amazon, and Party City. The statements didn’t break down what was purchased.

They also don’t explain these charges — in October 2019, $148 was spent at a tobacco shop in Washington D.C. Two years later, $823 was spent at Mednikow Jewelers for a “jewelry repair/sale,” and in January 2024, $1,100 at Mont Blanc, which sells designer ballpoint pens.

We also saw charges at Top Golf, bowling alleys, and more than $1,000 at a bar on Beale.

There were even bigger expenses, like in January 2018, during the same time as Elvis Presley’s birthday event was taking place. There were two charges totaling almost $20,000 dollars at Graceland’s hotel, the Guest House.

In 2022, we totaled around $16,000 was spent at AutoZone Park.

Then in 2023, MATA’s board unanimously approved a FedExForum box suite, which brought its marketing contract with the Memphis Grizzlies to $500,000.

The credit card statements show another $27,000 dollars was spent at FedExForum on food and drinks. Statements show popcorn, soda, mac and cheese, sliders and chicken tenders were charged to the company card.

All the while, bus riders stressed how long it was taking them to get to work.

“A lot of them out here. A lot work at McDonald’s. They work at places. They have to get to work,” a MATA bus rider said in 2020.

“It is unacceptable for this transportation to be like it is. It’s unacceptable for these bus riders to be going through what they’re going through,” a bus rider union rep. Sammie Hunter stated in November 2021.

That same month, MATA put $28,000 on their American Express.

“Our transit vision calls for much higher frequencies, but we don’t have the funding,” MATA’s Director of Planning told us back then.

It was a sentiment repeated again and again by MATA officials the next several years.

We recently caught up with Hunter. He told us his wait for the bus still takes hours.

“We wanted shelters. We wanted buses and better timing on these routes. We didn’t get it,” he said. “Had they listened to us, we wouldn’t be at this point. We wouldn’t be where we are now.”

MATA’s new interim CEO, John Lewis, said his team is questioning $144,000 on the former executives’ company credit cards.

“Office supplies, parking, dues and subscriptions,” interim CEO John Lewis told the MATA board in March.

He said city officials, as well as the state’s Comptroller’s Office, have been made aware.

Get the latest from the WREG Investigators in your inbox