A Manhattan woman accused of stealing the home of a dying Queens widow in a deed-theft scheme is now suing her alleged partner, claiming he cheated her out of her own property as well.
Deepa V. Roy, 69, and Victor Quimis, 40, were indicted on deed-theft charges in August 2025. Prosecutors allege the pair worked together to take the Kew Gardens Hills, Queens, home of Renuka Bherwani while she was receiving hospice care.
In a new lawsuit, Roy alleges that Quimis devised an “egregious deed theft scheme” to take control of her home after her husband’s death. She is seeking at least $1 million in damages for the alleged theft of her property, unpaid rent and deed fraud.
Deed theft, an issue state officials have vowed to address amid a rise in reported cases, typically involves forged documents, false statements or other deception used to illegally seize ownership of another person’s home.
After Roy’s husband, Abner Richard Siegel, died in November 2023, she allegedly asked Quimis to help remove squatters from a Flushing, Queens, property that she and Siegel owned together, according to a lawsuit filed Sept. 16 in Queens Supreme Court.
Instead, Quimis allegedly took “predatory advantage of [the] elderly, grieving widow” by preparing two bargain-and-sale deeds that ultimately transferred ownership of the $817,000 property to him, the complaint states.
The allegedly fraudulent documents were purportedly notarized by a fictitious notary named “Shereece Rthel Clarke” and bore the typo-filled imprint, “State od [sic] New York.”
Roy alleges in the court papers that Quimis dated the final fraudulent deed Jan. 22, 2024.
Quimis eventually removed the squatters in June 2025, but allegedly moved his own family into the property. According to the lawsuit, he, his wife Margot, his mother-in-law and their two children have lived at the investment property “rent free” ever since.
The lawsuit also accuses Quimis of “stripping and stealing” Roy’s belongings, including a $12,000 boiler installed in 2015, major appliances and antique furniture. It further alleges that he gutted and remodeled a Golden Dodge Ram limousine that had belonged to Siegel’s father.
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“Ms. 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,” Christopher Anderson, her attorney in the civil case, told The Post. Quimis and his wife did not respond to requests for comment.
The criminal case against Roy and Quimis remains pending, according to the New York state attorney general’s office. They are scheduled to return to court Nov. 4.
Both defendants have pleaded not guilty to multiple deed-theft-related charges. Officials said their case was the first brought under the state law that criminalizes deed theft.
According to officials and Bherwani’s family, the pair allegedly prepared a fraudulent deed on Oct. 13, 2024, while Bherwani was in hospice care and suffering from dementia. She died at age 88 in June 2025.
Bherwani’s son, Kamal Bherwani, a former executive in the administrations of Mayors Michael Bloomberg and Rudy Giuliani, has also filed a civil lawsuit against Roy and Quimis.
He believes Roy is attempting to distance herself from responsibility in his mother’s case.
“It’s just ironic that she’s making that statement a few weeks before a criminal trial,” Kamal Bherwani told The Post. “The person who brought Victor [Quimis] into the situation was Deepa [Roy] . . . Victor is an expert in doing this — he may have taken on some aspects of the fraud, but there’s no doubt she’s the one who sourced my mother.”
Jeremy Saland, who represents Roy in the criminal case, said she “continues to vigorously fight and dispute the allegations against her.”
“It’s important to recognize that two unfortunate realities can be true: Renuka Bherwani may very well have been the victim of Mr. Quimis, but so was Deepa Roy,” he said.
Attorneys representing Quimis in the criminal case did not respond to requests for comment.