COUNTING HIS BOOTY: Jeffrey Hillman, who was given a pair of boots by a kindly cop last year, counts his day's haul on the subway Sunday after begging — barefoot — in Midtown.
What a heel!
The barefoot beggar who made headlines when a kindly cop gave him a pair of boots has an apartment and a preacher paying his bills — but he still pretends to be homeless and hides his shoes in a garbage bag, The Post has learned.
Jeffrey Hillman was spotted at 9:20 p.m. Sunday counting a huge wad of bills with the dexterity of a bank teller while riding a No. 2 train from Times Square to his home in The Bronx.
AP
Officer DePrimo's act of kindness made headlines around the world after a passerby snapped this pic on his gift on a frigid winter night.
Wetting his thumb and glancing warily at his few fellow passengers, Hillman, 54, deftly counted out a stack of bills, placed it on the seat and started counting another as a Post reporter shot video.
Just days earlier, the alleged grifter was confronted by another Post reporter on Sixth Avenue in Midtown. Mooching cash from passers-by, he was barefoot and wearing a sign on his back that read "HOMELESS."
Asked about his boots, he replied, "I choose not to wear shoes" — even though a New Jersey clergyman who has been paying Hillman's utility bills said the man owns at least 30 pairs.
"I have the shoes. People always ask me where are the shoes? I tell them they're in the bag," said Hillman, who apparently wears shoes to and from home but sheds them for his Midtown homeless act.
"I choose not to wear the shoes. Is that a crime? No! My feet haven't fallen off yet," the defiant panhandler declared, dragging a large black garbage bag behind him.
Asked about the $100 all-weather boots NYPD Officer Larry DePrimo gave him on Nov. 14 in Times Square, Hillman said he had hidden them away because "they are worth a lot of money."
Hillman insisted that he never asks anyone for cash or gifts and that people simply fork the money over when they pass him as he trudges barefoot through Midtown.
And he shamelessly admitted he has a place of his own, despite the hand-lettered sign on his back.
"I got my own apartment. I cook for myself," he said.
On Sunday, Hillman started counting his haul shortly after hopping the subway train in Times Square ,and was still counting as it approached a stop at 152nd Street and Westchester Avenue not far from his apartment on Prospect Avenue in The Bronx.
The cash appeared to be mostly singles — but still added up to several hundred dollars, judging from the size of the pile.
And, despite his lucrative scam, he insisted he wasn't doing anything wrong.
"I'm not robbing anybody. It's Wall Street. It's the people in these buildings," he said.
But the Rev. John Graf of Bedminster, who pays Hillman's utility bills and buys him phone cards, said it's wrong to pull the wool over people's eyes.
"I don't want him conning me," said Graf, who has known Hillman since they were in fourth grade. "He promised me that he wouldn't do that."
Graf admitted his buddy has a history of working the streets.
"He's done it 10-plus years. He can make 1,000 bucks a day" even though "he's got 30 pairs of shoes at home," he said.
Hillman — an Army vet and the brother of a college professor and a church administrator — has rap sheets in New York and Pennsylvania that stretch back to the early 1980s.
He was most recently busted in New York City in 2008 for possession of a controlled substance.
He had a similar drug bust in 2003 and a number of charges in 2002 for harassment, menacing, criminal mischief, reckless endangerment, possession of stolen property and resisting arrest.
In 1998, he was pinched for public lewdness after allegedly masturbating in front of a crowd in Hamilton Heights.
DePrimo — who put the boots and socks on Hillman's feet himself — could not be reached.
rfredericks@nypost.com
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