A former local cop will spend six months in prison for illegally transferring the deed of a dead woman’s home to herself, a judge ruled on Wednesday.
A jury earlier this year convicted disgraced police officer Blanche O’Neal, 49, on charges including perjury and criminal possession of a forged instrument after she falsified the signature of the property’s rightful heir, the nephew of its former owner Lillian Hudson, in 2012 while transferring the deed to the home at 23A Vernon Avenue between Nostrand and Marcy avenues to herself.
O’Neal, who lives in Bedford-Stuyvesant and formerly worked in Bushwick’s 83rd Precinct, falsely claimed she bought the property for $10,000 from the nephew, whose aunt died in 1993, and whose signature she forged on documents she later filed with the city’s Department of Finance.
And two years after she transferred the deed, the crooked cop in 2014 told a grand jury that she owned the building while testifying following a burglary there, according to District Attorney Eric Gonzalez, who said the nephew discovered the deed in O’Neal’s name that year after a would-be buyer approached him about purchasing the property.
“I will continue to protect Brooklyn homeowners whose valuable properties may be targeted by scam artists,” said Gonzalez. “I urge property owners to register their homes with the Automated City Register Information System so that they are automatically informed of changes made to documents associated with their property, such as occurred in this case.”
