He’s giving up a stolen house for the big house.
A judge on Wednesday sentenced an East Flatbush man to as many as nine years behind bars for forging a deed in order to steal his elderly neighbor’s house.
Supreme Court Justice Danny Chun sentenced 37-year-old Winston Gregory Hall months after a jury convicted him of second-degree grand larceny and other charges in October following a trial last year — during which Hall, whom officials released without bail after his arrest, went on the lam, forcing the jurors to convict him in absentia.
The punishment is a fitting penalty for the two-time law-breaker, whom cops caught up with two months after his conviction when they stopped him for a traffic violation on a Kings County street, according to Brooklyn’s top prosecutor.
“This defendant twice showed a disregard for the rule of law, first by stealing his neighbor’s house, and then absconding during his trial,” said District Attorney Eric Gonzalez. “He’s now been held accountable.”
Hall in April 2015 established the Winston Gregory Hall Express Trust, naming himself as the sole trustee, and later that month forged a phony deed transferring ownership of his 84-year-old neighbor’s E. 49th Street home to his trust, according to prosecutors, who said the victim lived with family in faraway New Jersey at the time.
The defendant then filed the fake deed, along with other forged tax documents, with the New York City Register’s Office one month later, but when investigators contacted the victim, she told them she never knew Hall and never signed documents transferring her home to his trust, prosecutors said.
Gonzalez said his office will continue to crack down on property thieves like Hall — whom the jury also convicted of second-degree criminal possession of a forged instrument, and first-degree offering a false instrument for filing — in order to protect local homeowners from their predatory practices.
“This case is part of my continuing commitment to ensuring justice for Brooklyn homeowners, who are all too often the target of unscrupulous individuals,” he said.
