A 35-year-old man glowingly profiled in a New York Times piece last month for being part of a longtime illegal street market that hawks donated goods in Downtown Brooklyn is a registered high-risk sex offender with a long rap sheet, The Post has learned.

Tyshawn Kennedy is part of a rogue vending operation — nicknamed “Hoodwill” — that has been openly siphoning business from thrift-chain Goodwill’s shop at the corner of Bond and Schermerhorn streets for more than a decade, according to neighborhood leaders and other eyewitnesses.

Good Samaritans arriving to drop off bags of clothing, shoes and other items are routinely duped curbside by Kennedy and other crew members into thinking they’re affiliated with Goodwill.

The Hoodwill hawkers usually sell the donated goods out of the bags they’re brought in along the public sidewalk — and then litter the bustling walkway almost daily with remaining bags of unsold goods.

The Times piece, published Aug. 4, all but glorified Kennedy and his cohorts. 

It focused on obstacles making it difficult to get street vendor licenses in NYC and quoted shoppers who prefer Hoodwill over Goodwill because its sellers offer cheaper prices – and are “working-class guys trying to make it.”

However, the article failed to mention that Kennedy in 2015 was sentenced to two years in prison and forced to register as a “Level 3” sex offender in New York after being convicted of second-degree attempted rape of a minor.

The April 2014 incident involved “sexual contact” between Kennedy, then 23, and a 14-year-old girl, records show.

The Times report also failed to note Kennedy was arrested in 2021 by cops in Bayonne, NJ, for shoplifting – and allegedly kicked a police officer before getting pepper sprayed. He was slapped with assualt and other charges, The Jersey Journal reported.

Instead, The Times merely mentioned Kennedy spent some time in and out of jail since he was 18 without being specific and sympathetically quoted him claiming his criminal history makes it difficult to find work.

Kelly Carroll, executive director of the nearby Atlantic Avenue Business Improvement District, ripped The Times for “trying to frame” the story as an “equity issue” while ignoring Kennedy is “someone with a violent criminal history towards women.”

She also said other street sellers are stealing donated goods meant for a nearby Salvation Army four blocks away on Atlantic Avenue and – like the Hoodwill operation – regularly litter the neighborhood with unsold goods.

Kennedy told The Post on Thursday he’s “not hiding” from his criminal past. 

He also claimed he and his cohorts “clean up” after themselves and are doing the neighborhood a public service because Goodwill “overcharges” consumers for used merchandise, claiming shoes he sells for three bucks that go for “$10 to $20” at Goodwill.

“What’s wrong with me asking someone for a donation?” he said. “I am out here like everyone else trying to make a hustle for myself. I am staying out of trouble. I did my time.”

Hours after The Post visited the Goodwill site and began inquiring to local leaders about Kennedy’s criminal past, The Times updated its online story on Thursday night with an “editor’s note.”

It said “senior editors learned details” of the ex-con’s criminal history after the article published, conducted a review and “concluded that the article fell short of our standards and should not have been published as it was written.”

“The writer had informed an editor before publication that Mr. Kennedy’s history included an attempted rape conviction and that he remains on the New York State sex offender registry,” the note also conceded. “That information should have been included in the article. More broadly, senior editors should have been made aware of those details before publication and discussed other ways to write about Hoodwill and the issues around it.”

During his interview with The Post, Kennedy briefly stopped to ask a woman who arrived with two huge bags of books and other goods, “Are you donating today?”

Minutes later, the same woman told the reporter she thought she was donating to Goodwill.

Jordan Barowitz, a neighborhood resident and longtime public affairs strategist who worked for the Bloomberg administration, said he’s not shocked by Kennedy’s rap sheet and conceded he, too, was once duped into giving donated goods to other Hoodwill hawkers. 

“It is not surprising that someone who intimidates people making charitable donations to Goodwill into giving him their stuff, extracts what is valuable and then leaves what remains on the street, has a criminal history,” said Barowitz of Kennedy. 

Staffers at Goodwill Industries’ Bond Street site declined to comment.

Regina Myer, president of the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, said the illegal vending outside Goodwill has turned the “corner into a dumping ground,” forcing the private and publicly funded development corporation to “severely deplete” resources by hauling roughly 15 to 25 extra large trash bags of unsold items several times a week from the site. 

Democratic Councilman Lincoln Restler, who represents the neighborhood, also said Hoodwill is out of hand.

He said he’s repeatedly pushed the Sanitation Department and NYPD to ramp up enforcement — only to see the unlicensed street sellers return anyway and “aggressively intercept” more donations. 

“My No. 1 complaint is that these guys leave an enormous mess every day,” he said.