New York’s deed theft epidemic just got a bizarre twist. Deepa V. Roy, a Manhattan woman currently on trial for allegedly stealing a dying widow’s home in Queens, is now suing her supposed partner in crime. She claims Victor Quimis didn’t just help her scam Renuka Bherwani; he turned around and scammed her out of her own Flushing property.
This isn’t just a legal battle over real estate; it’s a messy, high-stakes fight between two people who allegedly teamed up to steal homes. Roy says Quimis took advantage of her grief after her husband died and used forged documents to make himself the owner of her $817,000 house. It’s a classic case of a crook getting burned by another crook.
The Widow and The Scam
A New York Post report states that in August 2025, Roy and Quimis faced indictment for taking the Kew Gardens Hills residence of Renuka Bherwani during her hospice care. Now, Roy is fighting back in Queens Supreme Court with a lawsuit filed on September 16. She alleges that Quimis concocted an “egregious deed theft scheme” to seize her own investment property in Flushing after her husband, Abner Richard Siegel, passed away in November 2023.
The complaint details how Quimis allegedly took “predatory advantage of [the] elderly, grieving widow” to create two fake bargain-and-sale deeds. These fraudulent documents supposedly transferred ownership of the $817,000 property to him. The scheme was so sloppy that the fake deeds were stamped by a made-up notary named “Shereece Rthel Clarke,” complete with a typo-ridden imprint reading “State od [sic] New York.”
Living Rent Free
Quimis allegedly dated the final fake deed on January 22, 2024. By June 2025, the lawsuit claims he had finally ousted the squatters from the Flushing home, only to move his own family in. Quimis, his wife Margot, his mother-in-law, and two children have been living there “rent free” since, according to the complaint. The stolen items, unpaid rent, and the act of theft itself are now the basis for Roy’s demand of no less than $1 million in damages.
Roy’s attorney, Christopher Anderson, told The Post that his client is trying to clear her name and hold Quimis accountable. “Ms. Roy is not a perpetrator of deed theft; she is its primary victim,” Anderson said. Ms. Roy chose not to stay quiet, instead launching aggressive, proactive legal steps to ensure Mr. Quimis faces accountability.
A Timely Irony
The timing of this lawsuit is raising eyebrows, especially with a criminal trial looming for Roy regarding the Bherwani case. Kamal Bherwani, the son of the original victim, sees Roy’s move as a desperate attempt to shift the blame. “It’s just ironic that she’s making that statement a few weeks before a criminal trial,” Bherwani told The Post.
New Yorkers are watching closely as these two alleged co-conspirators turn on each other.
This is opinion and commentary from the RapForMayor team.
