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A fraudster who stole a home from a dying widow pleaded guilty to deed theft — the first conviction under a new criminal law, the Attorney General’s office announced.
Victor Quimis, 40, admitted Thursday to stealing the Kew Gardens home of Renuka Bherwani, an elderly widow who was receiving end-of-life hospice care at her house, according to Attorney General Letitia James.
The fake deeds will be vacated and the home will be returned to the family, James said.
“Deed theft is a malicious crime that robs families of their homes, their community, and their financial security,” said James. “Victor Quimis preyed on an elderly woman at the end of her life to steal the home she owned for nearly 40 years.”
James announced the indictments in August 2025, the first to be prosecuted under the new law that made deed theft a criminal charge.
“My mother lived in that house for nearly forty years, and she was in hospice care in it when her home was stolen out from under her,” said her son, Kamal Bherwani, who thanked James for taking the case seriously.
Quimis, along with an accomplice, Deepa Roy, forged the signature of the senior citizen on documents that transferred the home from her to themselves.
Bherwani had bought the home in 1986 with her late husband, and when he died in 2022, Roy began showing up to the home telling Bherwani’s health aides that she was an old friend, according to the AG’s office.
The duo forged Bherwani, who was on hospice and suffering from dementia, on a fake deed giving themselves the home — for free — in October 2024, and later took out a massive mortgage on the home.
After paying off debts and liens against the home, the fake owners netted over $300,000, officials said.
Bherwani’s son and daughter-in-law only discovered the theft in late 2024 after they found a letter from a city agency mailed to the home addressed to Quimis — congratulating him on becoming the “new owner.”
Bherwani died in June 2025.
Quimis faces up to four and a half years in prison at his sentencing on 2 counts of grand larceny in January — where James will ask the court to void the fraudulent mortgage as well, her office said.
“Today’s conviction returns my mother’s home to her family and holds the man who stole it accountable,” Kamal Bherwani said on Thursday.
Roy, 69, has pleaded not guilty, and will stand trial in February.
Roy even claims to be a victim of Quimis as well, and filed a lawsuit accusing him of stealing her own home in September.
