Queens Home Stolen From Dead Woman's Family Using Fake Deed, DA Says

EAST ELMHURST, QUEENS — Two men have been indicted for stealing a Queens home from the family of a dead woman by posing as her son and filing false documents in order to sell it for a profit, according to prosecutors.

Jorge Vasquez Jr. and Andy V. Singh face charges including grand larceny, identity theft and forgery in connection with their alleged efforts to take control of 23-41 100th St., a two-story home in East Elmhurst. The charges were announced Tuesday by the Queens District Attorney's office.

The scheme was launched after the home's longtime owner died in 2019 and passed it on to her sole biological son. In October 2021, however, that man noticed an email from his mother's mortgage company confirming a change in contact information on the home loan, mentioning an email address he did not recognize, prosecutors said.

After contacting the company, he learned the mortgage had been paid off days earlier. He stopped by the home, and saw workers doing construction and removing his personal possessions from the house — including childhood photo albums — and tossing them in a dumpster outside, prosecutors said.

By November, a fake deed was filed with the city, saying the home had been sold for $530,000 the previous month by Jorge Vasquez, Jr. — "as sole heir" of the deceased former owner — to a corporation controlled by Andy V. Singh, prosecutors said.

The D.A.'s office, which got involved after being contacted by the woman's son, later determined that Singh had made "numerous phone calls" to the home's mortgage lender in September 2021, seeking a payoff statement before the sale, authorities said.

In those calls, he claimed to be the homeowner's son — and in another case, the homeowner — and provided the dead woman's name and social security number, according to prosecutors.

To sell the home, Vasquez and Singh submitted a death certificate for the former owner, and affidavits naming Vasquez as the sole heir — all of them fraudulent, prosecutors said.

Vasquez, 40, a Long Island resident, and Singh, 34, of the Bronx, were both arraigned Monday and are next due in court on Aug. 10. They each face up to 15 years in prison if convicted.