It’s a case of grand theft house.
A Manhattan woman claims an ex-con stole her family home in Queens by filing a phony deed with the city and moving in.
Now Jennifer Merin is battling in court to remove the convicted armed robber, Darrell Beatty, 49, and his sons, Darrell Kash Beatty, 25, and DeShaun Beatty, 22, from the three-bedroom Tudor she says they snatched in February.
“It just devastates me,” Merin, an online film critic, said as she looked at cherished family heirlooms — photos, a circa-1920 bed frame, vintage suitcases, classic television sets, a smashed 6-foot vase — piled like trash in the garage of the Laurelton home.
Merin said her Russian and Ukrainian grandparents moved into the new row house on 141st Avenue in 1931 and raised her mother and her mother’s two siblings there.
The family filled the home with treasures from around the world. She inherited it several decades ago after her mother died.
“The house was maintained basically as a sanctuary to my family,” said Merin, who paid insurance, taxes and utility bills on the property and would visit every few months.
She never rented it, and kept her 1992 Subaru Outback parked there, she said.
It just devastates me… The house was maintained basically as a sanctuary to my family.
- Jennifer Merin
A spike in her February water bill, which she got on May 27, first alerted her to illegal occupants. She called 911, but when cops went to the house, Beatty told them he was the legal resident.
She went to investigate herself and was “horrified” to find the locks changed and her car missing. Peering through the windows, she saw most of her possessions were also gone.
“Everything from Chinese palace vases to my underwear,” she recalled.
She called cops again. But with no one answering the door, they advised Merin to take the matter to court.
Neighbors said they saw trucks arrive at the house around February and furniture being carried out. Around the same time, they said, the Beattys and their pit bull became fixtures on the quiet block.
“I see them coming and going. I don’t think they talk to nobody in the neighborhood,” a neighbor said.
Merin and her lawyer soon unearthed a deed transfer filed by Darrell Beatty, claiming he obtained the house in March 2013 from an “Edith Moore.” But the address given for Moore does not exist.
The phone number for Beatty listed on the deed was answered by the voice mail of a “Tony,” and messages were not returned.
There was no mention of Merin or her grandparents, the original owners, on the transfer form.
Merin contacted the Finance Department, which oversees the city register. Officials confirmed the 2013 deed transfer was fraudulent and updated the deed with Merin’s name on June 4.
A Finance source said that the case is being jointly investigated by the Queens District Attorney’s Office and the city sheriff and that it “could be part of a larger ring” of deed scammers.
Beatty has not been charged.
The extraordinary theft has jolted city bureaucrats.
“That case is what changed the dynamic in the Department of Finance of how we process deed transfers,” city Sheriff Joseph Fucito, whose office executes evictions and probes deed fraud, told The Post.
For years, filing a fake deed transfer was easy. The legal documents can be found online, filled out with only basic details, then stamped by a notary public.
“The old policy was designed to be customer friendly. It’s very hard to be customer friendly and super vigilant at the same time,” Fucito said.
Since the Merin case, staffers have been retrained to flag discrepancies, such as unusually low sale prices or suspect businesses, and personal information is checked against previously filed city records.
City property owners can also sign up for a new Finance Department service that alerts them if a change is made to their deed.
Since June, the new policies have red-flagged more than 500 deed transfers. While many were found to contain legitimate filing errors, at least 100 deeds impacting 300 properties are now being investigated as possible frauds, Fucito said.
Often they involve crooked attorneys and title companies, he said.
“We want to stem the tide of fraudulent filings,” the sheriff said.
With the criminal probe ongoing, Merin has little recourse but to try to evict the Beattys in court.
After Darrell Beatty failed to appear in August, a judge approved an eviction, but it was stayed last week when Beatty claimed he had health problems.
He is due back in Queens Housing Court on Tuesday.
In court documents, Darrell Beatty says he rented the house from a “Khalid Moore,” with an option to buy, and that he paid $10,000 in rent to Moore.
On Friday, The Post confronted DeShaun Beatty outside the house. He refused to answer questions, walked in and shut the door, ordering his pit bull to guard the entrance.
Through the windows, the living and dining rooms appeared mostly bare, with a few sections of modern sofas and a nearly empty bottle of Maker’s Mark bourbon sitting on a shelf.
A four-tiered Baccarat crystal chandelier that Merin said had been hanging in the living room was gone.