Exclusive | NYC woman accused of deed theft claims co-conspirator stole her own home too: lawsuit
A Manhattan woman accused of heartlessly stealing a dying widow’s home in a deed-theft scam is suing her alleged co-conspirator for cheating her out of her own property too.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 while she was in hospice care.
Roy now claims in a new lawsuit that Quimis concocted an “egregious deed theft scheme” 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.Deed theft — an issue state officials have vowed to tackle amid a spike in incidents — involves using fake documents, forgery and lies to illegally assume ownership of someone else’s house.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.Instead, Quimis allegedly took “predatory advantage of [the] elderly, grieving widow” and created two bargain-and-sale deeds that ultimately made him the owner of the $817,000 property, according to the complaint.The fraudulent documents were allegedly stamped by made-up notary “Shereece Rthel Clarke” with the typo-ridden imprint: “State od [sic] New York.” Roy claimed in the court papers that Quimis dated the final fake deed Jan.22, 2024.
In June 2025, Quimis finally ousted the squatters – 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 “rent free” since, per the complaint. Quimis also allegedly “stripped and stole” Roy’s property, including a $12,000 boiler installed in 2015, major appliances and antique furniture — and gutted and remodeled a Golden Dodge Ram limousine that belonged to Siege...