A Queens man on Thursday became the first person to be convicted under a New York State law targeting deed theft after he admitted to stealing the home of a dying older woman with dementia.
The man, Victor Quimis, 40, pleaded guilty in State Supreme Court in Queens to two counts of first-degree grand larceny and one count of second-degree residential mortgage fraud. He faces up to four and a half years in prison.
As part of the plea, the home of the woman, Renuka Bherwani, who died in June 2025, will be returned to her family, prosecutors said.
Kamal Bherwani, Ms. Bherwani’s son, said in a statement on Thursday that the conviction provided a measure of accountability.
“My mother lived in that house for nearly 40 years, and she was in hospice care in it when her home was stolen out from under her,” he said.
Deed theft has been a persistent issue in New York City, with scammers targeting older homeowners who have significant equity. In 2023, the New York State attorney general’s office estimated that at least 3,500 complaints of deed theft had been filed in the city over the previous decade.
Scammers often forge owners’ signatures, or trick them into signing over deeds by promising to take care of financial concerns like mortgages and unpaid utilities.
And while some cases, like Ms. Bherwani’s, have been prosecuted, others remain difficult to investigate because it is not always obvious to homeowners that they have been victims. Years can pass before an offense is reported, and it can be challenging to determine when behavior is criminal and when a homeowner has simply made a bad decision.
Complicating matters further, the legal ownership of a home is sometimes murky, particularly if the property was inherited by several different heirs or is in the hands of a guardian or conservator.
State and city officials have recently taken steps to address the problem.
This spring, Mayor Zohran Mamdani created an Office of Deed Theft Prevention. That followed the passage of the law in 2024 involved in Mr. Quimis’s conviction, known as the Heirs Property Protection and Deed Theft Prevention Act, which firmly established deed theft as a crime. The law was written in part by Letitia James, the state attorney general.
“Deed theft is a malicious crime that robs families of their homes, their community and their financial security,” Ms. James said in a statement on Thursday. “Victor Quimis preyed on an elderly woman at the end of her life to steal the home she owned for nearly 40 years.”
Mr. Quimis is one of two defendants in the case: Prosecutors said he worked with a woman, Deepa Roy, to steal Ms. Bherwani’s home. Ms. Roy, 69, is scheduled to go on trial in February, prosecutors said. The relationship between Mr. Quimis and Ms. Roy is unclear.
Ms. Bherwani, who immigrated from India, purchased the home, a two-story brick rowhouse in the Kew Gardens Hills neighborhood, with her husband in 1986. After he died in 2022, Ms. Roy began showing up at the home, saying she was a friend and eventually asking if she could move in.
Ms. Bherwani’s relatives said in court papers that they thought the newcomers wanted to comfort the dying woman.
In October 2024, though, Ms. Roy and Mr. Quimis forged Ms. Bherwani’s signature on a deed to transfer the home to themselves, according to prosecutors. Then they created a second deed with a forged signature to transfer the home to a company Mr. Quimis owned, Hunter Studios & Developer Corporation, prosecutors said.
Mr. Quimis used the second deed to take out a $552,500 mortgage on the property. He paid off Ms. Bherwani’s mortgage and other liens and kept the remainder — more than $300,000, according to prosecutors. Ms. Roy received “at least $15,000” for helping with the deed theft, prosecutors said.
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