This Guy Will Spend Up to 15 Years in Jail for Faking Ownership of Bed-Stuy Brownstone

BED-STUY, NY — An upstate resident was sentenced to seven-and-a-half to 15 years in state prison Wednesday for claiming possession of a Bed-Stuy brownstone by forging a judge's signature, and then selling that brownstone illegally for almost $250,000, the Brooklyn District Attorney's office said.

In January 2015, Joseph McCray, a 54-year-old man from Niagara Falls, New York, filed a court order with the forged signature of Brooklyn Civil Supreme Court Justice Yvonne Lewis that said he owned the brownstone, Acting Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said.

McCray sold the house for $500,000 and cashed nearly $250,000 on it. The rest of the money had to be used to pay for outstanding liens, the Brooklyn DA said.

McCray spent over a decade trying to forge his ownership of 119 McDonough St. in Bed-Stuy, according to the Brooklyn DA. He was technically evicted from 119 McDonough St. in 2002 because he never paid rent, but he continued to live in the building for several years anyway, the Brooklyn DA said.

Between 2001 and 2007, McCray presented fraudulent information at Civil Court several times, pretending he was the landlord of the building and illegally collecting tenants' rents.

Then in 2007, HSBC Bank began to foreclose the mortgage on the house, and McCray filed so many motions asserting he was the owner of the building that two separate judges banned him from filing any more motions related to the property, according to the Brooklyn DA.

"This significant prison sentence should serve as a warning to anyone who tries to take advantage of Brooklyn's booming real estate market by conducting criminal schemes, like the brazen forgeries and theft in this case," Acting Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said in a statement. "Our Real Estate Fraud Unit is here to protect homeowners from scammers and I am committed to aggressively investigating and prosecuting these crimes."

McCray's January 2015 fraudulent court motion claiming ownership of the building actually took the building away from its rightful owner and ended the foreclosure on the house, the Brooklyn DA said. McCray was arrested in July 2015 at his lawyer's office where he had gone to pick up a check.

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