{"id":375651,"date":"2026-10-17T15:52:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-17T15:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/375651\/"},"modified":"2026-10-17T15:52:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-17T15:52:08","slug":"nyc-woman-accused-of-deed-theft-claims-co-conspirator-stole-her-home-lawsuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/375651\/","title":{"rendered":"NYC woman accused of deed theft claims co-conspirator stole her home: lawsuit"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Manhattan woman accused of heartlessly stealing a dying widow\u2019s home in a deed-theft scam is suing her alleged co-conspirator for cheating her out of her own property too.<\/p>\n

Deepa V. Roy, 69, and Victor Quimis, 40, were indicted on deed-theft charges in August 2025 after allegedly teaming up to steal the Kew Gardens Hills, Queens home of Renuka Bherwani<\/a> while she was in hospice care. <\/p>\n

Roy now claims in a new lawsuit that Quimis concocted an \u201cegregious deed theft scheme<\/a>\u201d to commandeer her home after her husband died. She is demanding at least $1 million in damages for stolen property, unpaid rent and deed theft.<\/p>\n

Renuka Bherwani, seen with her son Kamal, was on hospice when she was the victim of deed theft. Brigitte Stelzer\/copyphoto<\/p>\n

Deed theft \u2014 an issue state officials have vowed to tackle amid a spike in incidents<\/a> \u2014 involves using fake documents, forgery and lies to illegally assume ownership of someone else\u2019s house.<\/p>\n

After her husband, Abner Richard Siegel, died in November 2023, Roy allegedly asked Quimis to help remove squatters from a Flushing, Queens, home she and her husband owned together, according to a lawsuit filed Sept. 16 in Queens Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

Instead, Quimis allegedly took \u201cpredatory advantage of [the] elderly, grieving widow\u201d and created two bargain-and-sale deeds that ultimately made him the owner of the $817,000 property, according to the complaint.<\/p>\n

The fraudulent documents were allegedly stamped by made-up notary \u201cShereece Rthel Clarke\u201d with the typo-ridden imprint: \u201cState od [sic] New York.\u201d <\/p>\n

Deep Roy claims Victor Quimis scammed her out of the deed of her house in Queens, seen above. Google Maps<\/p>\n

Roy claimed in the court papers that Quimis dated the final fake deed <\/a>Jan. 22, 2024. <\/p>\n

In June 2025, Quimis finally ousted the squatters \u2013 but replaced them with his own family, the lawsuit claims. He, his wife Margot, his mother-in-law and two kids have been living at the investment property \u201crent free\u201d since, per the complaint.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Quimis also allegedly \u201cstripped and stole\u201d Roy\u2019s property, including a $12,000 boiler installed in 2015, major appliances and antique furniture \u2014 and gutted and remodeled a Golden Dodge Ram limousine that belonged to Siegel\u2019s father.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Renuka Bherwani\u2019s home, which Quimis and Roy allegedly stole the deed to, is seen above. <\/p>\n

\u201cMs. Roy is not a perpetrator of deed theft; she is its primary victim. Rather than remaining silent, Ms. Roy has taken aggressive, proactive legal action to hold Mr. Quimis accountable,\u201d her attorney for the civil case, Christopher Anderson, told The Post. Quimis and his wife did not return a request for comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Roy and Quimis\u2019 criminal case is ongoing, according to the New York state attorney general\u2019s office. They are due back in court on Nov. 4.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Both have pleaded not guilty to a slew of deed theft-related charges. Their case was the first brought under the state law criminalizing deed theft, officials said.<\/p>\n

AG Letitia James, seen with Kamal Bherwani, announced charges against Roy and Quimis in 2025. Brigitte Stelzer<\/p>\n

The pair allegedly created a phony deed Oct. 13, 2024, while Bherwani was in hospice and suffering from dementia, before she died at 88 in June 2025, according to officials and her family.<\/p>\n

Her son, Kamal Bherwani, who was an executive in the administrations for former Mayors Michael Bloomberg and Rudy Giuliani, has also taken civil action against Roy and Quimis.<\/p>\n

He believes Roy is also trying to evade blame in his mother\u2019s case.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s just ironic that she\u2019s making that statement a few weeks before a criminal trial,\u201d Kamal Bherwani told The Post. \u201cThe person who brought Victor [Quimis] into the situation was Deepa [Roy] . . . Victor is an expert in doing this \u2014 he may have taken on some aspects of the fraud, but there\u2019s no doubt she\u2019s the one who sourced my mother.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jeremy Saland, who is representing Roy in her criminal case, said she \u201ccontinues to vigorously fight and dispute the allegations against her.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s important to recognize that two unfortunate realities can be true:\u00a0Renuka Bherwani may very well have been the victim of Mr. Quimis, but so was Deepa Roy,\u201d he claimed.<\/p>\n

Lawyers representing Quimis in the criminal case did not return requests for comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Manhattan woman accused of heartlessly stealing a dying widow\u2019s home in a deed-theft scam is suing her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":375652,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[11798,396,2907,3100,75,57,9,56,63,65,64,122,797,58],"class_list":["post-375651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-elderly-care","tag-fraud","tag-housing","tag-lawsuit","tag-manhattan","tag-metro","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-queens","tag-theft","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=375651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375651\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/375652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=375651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=375651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=375651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}