Deed scams land thieves on Easy St.

Stealing property deeds in New York City is an easy crime to pull off, a new report finds.

A grand jury convened by the Manhattan district attorney revealed just how widescale the problem is in the report made public Thursday.

“A fraudster can identify vulnerable properties in various ways, for example, by scouring obituaries for recently deceased owners, physically canvassing neighborhoods for unoccupied or dilapidated residences, and checking public records for published liens and violations on properties,” the report says.

Often, a “homeowner’s signature on a deed is forged outright,” it went on.

The evidence reviewed showed transfers of deeds involving owners who “had been deceased several years earlier, or even several decades before the alleged conveyance,” the report details.

The panel issued several recommendations to protect would-be victims — often including elderly or infirm owners of brownstones in gentrifying areas — that included stricter rules for public notaries and an expansion of the filing false paperwork statute that applies to false deed fraud.

There were 20 convictions citywide since 2015 based on busts made by the New York City sheriff ’s office, which investigates suspicious deed dealings. Several arrests were also made based on referrals directly to the DA’s office.

“In case after case, a Manhattan grand jury uncovered heartbreaking frauds in which small properties representing the whole of a family’s accumulated wealth and heritage over 50 years was brazenly snatched by criminal fraudsters,” DA Cy Vance Jr. (below) said in a statement.