“Yes, she gave us gifts. but we gave her a roof, food and family,” — Yolanda Reyes, caretaker who used godchild’s funds for car, TVs and Dominican real-estate spree. (Angel Chevrestt)
Shanhellen Jimenez’s mom, Elena Ledesma. (
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Shanhellen Jimenez was in seventh grade when her mother was killed in the World Trade Center attacks. That year, the 12-year-old was awarded nearly $1 million by the federal September 11th Victim Compensation Fund.
The money — the lion’s share to become available to her when she turned 18 — was more than the middle-schooler could comprehend.
Her divorced mom, Elena Ledesma, had worked as a maintenance supervisor for Marsh & McLennan on the 93rd floor of the north tower, taking home $400 a week.
On that paltry paycheck, she supported Shanhellen and Angelina, her 17-year-old daughter, as well as her ailing mother, Candida Hernandez.
Growing up poor in South Williamsburg, the sisters were lucky if they got one pair of new sneakers a year, they recall.
On Sept. 12, 2001, Shanhellen and Angelina moved in with their grandmother, who lived across the hall on the fifth floor of the rundown South Third Street walk-up.
But she could not care for them. “Mama” was taking 20 medications a day, including insulin.
Two floors below, Shanhellen’s godmother, Yolanda Reyes — her late mother’s best friend — witnessed the sisters’ struggle. She told them they could move into her home and promised to care for them as if they were her own.
Shanhellen agreed, but Angelina, who had just collected her own $800,000 in federal compensation, decided to strike out on her own.
Reyes, the girls now claim, proved to be more blood-sucking parasite than fairy godmother.
Today, Shanhellen is penniless and on welfare — after years of being brazenly used as a “meal ticket” by the Reyes family, a Brooklyn judge ruled Thursday.
At first, life with the Reyes brood, a family of eight, was an improvement.
“They made it comfortable for me,” Shanhellen, now 22, told The Post. “But over the years, Yolanda brainwashed me. She would tell me my sister didn’t care about me.
“All the time, she was preparing me so that when I turned 18 and got the full amount of my money, I would give it up to her.”
In 2007, when Shanhellen reached 18, the Reyes clan started reaching for her cash, she said. They vowed to teach her to drive — if she gave Yolanda’s husband and son-in-law the money to purchase a $12,900 Chevy Trailblazer. She purchased the car and gave them the keys, but the lessons never followed, according to court papers.
She lavished her surrogate family with gifts, including flat-screen TVs and new clothes and furniture, according to the court papers.
She claims she also forked over money for jewelry and weekly groceries — and even for her godmother’s gambling.
When Yolanda complained of back pain, Shanhellen bought her an expensive chiropractic bed, she said.
But the biggest outlay came when Shanhellen was persuaded to invest her remaining $800,000 in a business property in the Dominican Republic, the court papers say.
Shanhellen recalled that she and members of the the Reyes family — each carrying thousands of dollars in cash withdrawn from her accounts — flew first class to Santo Domingo.
Between 2007 and ’09, she poured all of her money into opening a garage and carwash that doubled as a bar at night — all owned and operated under Yolanda’s name.
“She said I wasn’t a citizen in the Dominican Republic so it had to be put in her name,” Shanhellen said. “Yolanda did something to blind me to make me give up $1 million in two years. I kept sending her money for the business, but I don’t even know if the money went to the business.”
Angelina said her sister “felt obligated to buy things for them.”
“I would visit,” Angelina said, “and I’d see . . . they’d have a new washing machine and a dryer. My sister didn’t know the value of a dollar, and she didn’t know that she didn’t owe them anything.”
As the money dwindled, the business went downhill, Shanhellen said, and the Reyeses began neglecting her.
“They treated me like I was a slave,” she said, claiming that they stopped feeding her or buying her clothes. “They’d go out shopping and come back with all new stuff and wouldn’t get me anything.”
When the business folded last year, a depressed and broke Shanhellen finally reached out to her big sister, who by that time had lost her own money and home in the housing-market meltdown. They moved back upstairs to the apartment they grew up in, and sought legal advice to try to recoup Shanhellen’s fortune.
The first step was to file a small-claims case against the Reyes family — naming the godmother’s husband, Juan Reyes, and son-in-law, Emmanuel Nunez — to recover the cash spent on the car.
Last week, in a scathing ruling, Brooklyn Civil Court Judge Noach Dear wrote: “The trial evidence established that the defendants, together with . . . Ms. Reyes, have bilked the plaintiff for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
“[Yolanda] Reyes took full advantage of the plaintiff,” he added. “They used her as their meal ticket.”
He found the Dominican deal “particularly troubling.”
“Ms. Jimenez has already suffered once as a result of the tragedies of 9/11. She should not be made a victim a second time,” he concluded.
Shanhellen and Angelina — on food stamps and welfare and making minimum wage as a cashier and housekeeper, respectively — say they haven’t paid their rent in five months. They hope a lawyer will help them recover the rest of the money.
The Reyeses claim they never took advantage of Shanhellen and swear they plan to pay her back once the Dominican property is sold.
“We opened our doors to her, and she lived here for years, and we took care of everything,” Yolanda said. “Yes, she gave us gifts, but we gave her a roof, food and family.”