Two charged for stealing Kew Gardens Hills home from dying woman
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From left to right, Kamal Bherwani, New York Attorney General Letitia James, State Senators John Liu and Zellnor Myrie stand outside Queens Criminal Court to announce that two people were charged with stealing the deed to the Bherwani family’s home.Eagle photo by Noah Powelson
By Noah Powelson
The past several years have been hard on the Bherwani family.
Renuka Bherwani, their 88-year-old matriarch, was diagnosed with dementia, making her nearly immobile and requiring her to receive constant care at home. A few years later, her husband passed away and Bherwani's health worsened.
Then one day, her son opened the mail and discovered something unsettling – his mother’s Queens home no longer belonged to her.
Bherwani’s home had been stolen in her weakest moment, and the two alleged scammers believed to have illegally transferred the deed to themselves were charged in Queens Criminal Court on Thursday.
Deepa Roy, 68, and Victor Quimis, 39, face up to 25 years in prison after they were charged for defrauding Bherwani, who has since died, and stealing her Kew Gardens Hills home. On the steps of the Queens County Criminal courthouse on Thursday, New York Attorney General Letitia James announced her office was prosecuting Roy and Quimis under a new law passed by the state legislature last year. The prosecutor marks the first time the charges have been used against alleged deed theft perpetrators, who have for years escaped true justice by taking advantage of bureaucratic protections and vague laws, officials say.
According to the AG’s office, the duo targeted Bherwani in a multi-year scam that involved forging her signature in a deed transfer while her health declined.
Quimis was arrested on Aug. 4 and charged with grand larceny, offering a false instrument for filing, residential mortgage fraud, money laundering and scheme to defraud. Roy remains at large and faces the same charges.
Roy and Quimis are the first individuals charged under a new law that the state legislature passed last year which criminalizes deed theft, raises the severity of the offense and gives the AG’s office jurisdiction to prosecute offenders.
“Deepa Roy and Victor Quimis preyed on an elderly widow in hospice to steal the home she owned for nearly 40 years,” James said. “Cases like this one are exactly why I fought to advance new laws empowering my office to prosecute deed theft and protect New Yorkers’ homes. I will continue to use the law as both a sword and a shield to stop these despicable crimes and ensure this home is returned to the Bherwani family.”
Bherwani and her husband purchased the Kew Garden Hills home in 1986 after immigrating to the country. They went on to live in the home for decades.
According to the AG’s office and Bherwani’s family, at some point in 2022 after her husband had passed, Bherwani was approached by Roy, who convinced health care aides she was a friend. It is unclear how Roy knew about and came into contact with Bherwani, but the AG’s office said she visited the widow several times and eventually tried to convince health aides to let her live in a spare room in 2024.
She was never permitted to live at the house, but afterwards in October 2024, Roy and Quimis allegedly forged a deed with Bherwani’s signature, transferring ownership of her home to themselves for free. The duo allegedly used the late victim’s forged signature on a number of other required real estate transfer documents, including a registration form for water and sewer billing from the city.
In December 2024, Roy and Quimis allegedly used a second forged deed to transfer ownership of the home to Hunter Studios & Developer Corp, a company owned by Quimis. Afterwards, Quimis obtained a $552,500 mortgage on the property which allowed him to launder over $300,000 after paying off the previous mortgage, according to the AG’s office.
Roy allegedly received at least $15,000 for her role in the scam via a bank check from the stolen proceeds with a memo line stating, “Per agreement.”
That same month, Bherwani’s son, Kamal Bherwani, discovered the deed theft by accident after opening mail from the Department of Environmental Protection that congratulated Quimis on his new home with instructions on setting up accounts. The deed theft was reported to the AG’s office shortly after.
Bherwani passed away earlier this year.
“My mother, Renuka Bherwani, was 88 years old and…was in hospice care completely bed ridden with around the clock aides. She could not even turn in bed, or feed herself, or hold a pen,” Kamal Bherwani said. “Yet while she lay helpless, two individuals…conspired to steal her home. A home she had owned for decades.”
Kamal Bherwani said he only knew Roy as a recent acquaintance of his mother who would come to visit, and never suspected her of malicious intent until the deed was already stolen. He also said his mother never met or knew anything about Quimis.
Under the new deed theft law that Roy and Quimis were charged with, Bherwani’s home will be returned to her family after the two are convicted, according to the AG’s office. The law was co-written by James and State Senator Brian Kavanagh, who chairs the Committee on Housing, Construction and Community Development
“Deed theft is devastating and I was proud to work with Attorney General James and our colleagues to enact strong civil and criminal laws to prevent it whenever possible and to hold perpetrators accountable,” Kavanagh said.
Roy and Quimis won’t be the last to face prosecution for deed theft, a worrying trend of crimes that James has made a priority for her office. In February of this year, two people from Queens were indicted following an AG investigation for cheating an elderly couple out of nearly a million dollars and their South Ozone Park home.
Deed theft scam artists tend to target elderly people who are going through some sort of cognitive decline, as well as immigrants or non-native English speakers who may not be as familiar with government processes. While the full details of Roy and Quimis’ operation against Bherwani are not currently known, scammers typically try to establish long relationships they can use to build trust with the ultimate goal of acquiring information such as social security numbers that they can use to steal from their victims.
Technology also plays a part in how these scams manifest. Spam emails and voice calls have been used to steal information, but New York State Assemblymember Landon Dais also said that artificial intelligence technology is frequently used to mimic government communications or even voice calls from family members.
Queens Borough President Donovan Richards said that Queens alone has seen over 1,000 deed theft complaints in the last decade, and people of color are disproportionately targeted and impacted by these crimes.
“Those thousands of crimes, those are just the ones we know,” he said. “This scourge must stop.”
