Metro

Famous panhandler who won $100K in NYPD settlement died penniless and alone

It was the city’s largest legal payout last year — $15 million to be split among a group of beggars.

But the Bronx panhandler who started it all never got to see a happy ending. Instead, he died penniless and alone in January, leaving behind his wife and unborn child.

Eddie Wise became the city’s most famous bum in 2005 when he sued the NYPD to defend his right to peacefully panhandle. He was dropped from the class-action case in December 2006 in exchange for the handout of a lifetime: $100,001.

Back then, people honked their horns and shouted his name. Some yelled, “The $100,000 man!” and “Hey, Mr. Millionaire!”

“Everybody in the neighborhood is thinking that . . . I’m going to be broke pretty soon,” Wise, then 45, told New York magazine in 2007. “I got to prove to myself that I know how to handle this money. One hundred thousand dollars ain’t no joke.”

Still, shortly after cashing the check, Wise was back to hustling for spare change.

“Eddie was a good man,” his widow, Sharon Persaud, 37, told The Post. “He worked hard; he was always cheerful. A lot of people didn’t give him a chance.”

Wise was gone by the age of 51, and so was his fortune. Persaud found him on Jan. 28 bleeding from his nose in the dank, rat-filled basement they shared on East 158th Street. He died of a brain-stem hemorrhage due to acute cocaine intoxication and hypertensive cardiovascular disease, the medical examiner said.

“This time, he wanted a better life,” Persaud said. “We planned on leaving New York and buying a house. We had high hopes, but they never came through.”

In 2012, the city settled the suit Wise had started on behalf of panhandlers arrested long after the state’s loitering laws were ruled unconstitutional.

Wise’s lawyers were awarded $3 million, and eight original plaintiffs got $25,000 each. The rest was to be divided into small settlements.

Last year, attorney Katie Rosenfeld said Wise was due for another payout because he was arrested again after his 2007 settlement.

He never received it.

This wasn’t Wise’s only chance at a new life. He was a deliveryman in the 1990s and scored a settlement of tens of thousands after injuring his hand, New York magazine reported. He blew it all on cocaine.

Wise was born and raised in Harlem, one of three sons to a single mother. His father was a coke dealer who did four stints in state prison.

Sometime after graduating high school, Wise served in the National Guard but was discharged because of a heart murmur. That’s when he began using coke.

He was arrested at least 52 times, on charges that included felony crack possession, violating an order of protection and assaulting a woman.

In the last decade, Wise began hustling with a crew of vagrants on East 189th Street near Webster Avenue, where he saved parking spaces for drivers in exchange for a few bucks.

He also solicited handouts at the nearby North End Liquors and Bronx Botanica.

Cops jailed him every few months just to get him off the street. But one day, in January 2004, he saw a public defender he knew while he was in the courthouse holding pen.

Wise asked whether he could sue the NYPD, and she hooked him up with a legal team that took on the case.

Ross Biernick, who worked at a radiology office near Webster Avenue, watched Wise squander his windfall.

“When he won the money, he asked me what to do, but he didn’t listen,” Biernick told The Post. “He gave it to his uncle. He spent the rest on stupidity, drugs. He didn’t get better.”

Wise was doling out cash to then-21-year-old daughter Neecy and fellow panhandlers, who started to feel less like his friends and more like bullies.

He bought jeans, flashy Nike sneakers and electronics. He got a $2,000 wedding ring and jewelry for Persaud.

Persaud said he considered buying a car but never did. When the couple visited his relatives in North Carolina, they were “on his ass for money,” she said.

Wise left behind 3-year-old daughter Montice and son Cody, born last month. He also had a 16-year-old son with another woman, who said Wise disappeared after the settlement.

Persaud said she doesn’t know where Eddie’s money went but suspects that family and acquaintances leeched it. He was rumored to have bought a trailer for his uncle down south.

“I loved that man so much,” Persaud said. “It was always me and him. He deserved better. His life was hard.”