CHICAGO (CBS) – A daughter was desperate to raise the alarm on behalf of her hard-working dad.
She reached out to CBS 2 after spending months trying to track down thousands of dollars owed to her father from a lawsuit. The family said a stranger took the money and no one would help them. Then, CBS 2’s Lauren Victory got involved.
Jose Jimenez’s bank account looked great at the start of the new year.
Victory: “How happy were you to get that in your hands?”
Jimenez: “Real happy.”
He was holding a check for more than $13,000. It’s money that was owed to him in backpay for hauling shipping containers around the Chicago area.
Victory: “It sounds like this came just in time.”
Jimenez: “Yeah, right. Just in time.”
It was just in time because his first workday of 2024 ended with a bang. He said “goodbye” to some of that $13,000 in an instant.
It’s all very ironic.
Victory: “How long did it take for you to get your money?”
Jimenez: “Oh, like 10 months.”
The wait for his hard-earned cash actually goes back more than a decade. Jimenez was part of a class action lawsuit that accused a cargo logistics company of short-changing haulers for 12 years.
That company agreed to cough up more than $3 million split several ways.
“He kept telling me that there was a settlement check, and at first, I didn’t believe him,” said daughter Marili Jimenez.
Marili Jimenez said her dad didn’t know what his cut would be until they saw an image of the check with $13,871 printed on it.
“That’s when I was like, ‘Oh, this is real,'” Marili said.
That meant a real problem because the Gage Park family said the payout never made it to their mailbox. So they asked for an update.
Marili read from an email that said the check “was mailed to you on March 15 of 2023 and it has been cashed.”
Victory: “Was that the email that you were like, ‘Oh my God’?”
Marili: “Yes!”
The check may have been cashed, but not by Jimenez, the family said.
“I mean, it’s not my dad’s signature,” Marili said, who added her dad was “like freaking out. He was like, ‘What do you mean? Did somebody take my things? How did it happen?'”
Marili was determined to solve the mystery and get her father paid. So, she contacted the trucking settlement people and was told to fill out a fraud affidavit.
“He did the fraud affidavit. I emailed it,” Marili said. “They told me they wanted a wet signature, so he went to get it notarized. We mailed it. Then they said they didn’t find it.”
That led to months of emails back and forth with someone replying on behalf of JND Legal Administration. Court records show that the company received $60,000 to handle “settlement administration.”
“It was just like every time I would email them, because I wasn’t able to speak to anybody directly, they didn’t seem to know what was going on,” Marili said.
Finally, they received an update in December with a fraud denial attached that was marked Aug. 18.
“I was shocked when I saw the date on the letter, and I’m like, ‘OK, so you knew this all along yet, November, you told me two to three weeks the check was going to be re-issued,” Marili said.
The family was confused and unable to contain their frustration any longer. The hauler and his daughter reached out to CBS 2 for help. Within four hours of CBS 2 getting involved, the family received an email back from JND Legal’s vice president who promised to address Jimenez’s concerns.
A new check came promptly, but what never arrived were answers about what took so long and who stole his check in the first place.
Victory: “It’s a lot of money. You’re right. A lot of money that you earned.”
Jimenez: “Right.”
JND Legal declined to answer any of CBS 2’s questions about their handling of this specific claim or payouts overall. Jimenez was able to figure out the first check that never arrived was cashed at a U.S. Bank, which looked into the case, but a spokesperson declined to share any details about the investigation.
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