Lori Zeno, the disgraced founder of the Queens Defenders, tried to steal even more money from the legal defense organization’s coffers while out on bond in her federal fraud case, prosecutors allege.
Zeno, who’s accused of raiding the Queens Defenders coffers to fund a fancy lifestyle that included a penthouse apartment and resort vacations, tried to get a refund paid to her directly for more than $7,000 in supplies she ordered through the organization last year, the feds allege. Prosecutors described the alleged scheme in a letter seeking to tighten the conditions of her release as she awaits trial.
Zeno, 64, and her boyfriend, Rashad Ruhani, 55, were indicted in June on charges they stole about $60,000 for personal expenses, using the Queens Defenders’ accounts to pay rent for their $6,000-a-month Astoria penthouse apartment, which they claimed was being used for “client defense” and “foster parent care.”
As part of their scam, Zeno hired a woman Ruhani had married about a decade earlier as a $60,000-a-year director of a nonexistent “health and wellness” program, according to the feds.
Zeno used a Queens Defenders credit card in December to pay for nearly $12,000 worth of supplies for that program — plastic bins, industrial scales, a vacuum sealer and industrial packing tables — the feds say. She used the same vendor to buy more than $2,600 in shelving and knives with the organization’s card last September.
After her indictment, Zeno tried to return those orders as a quick source of cash, the feds allege.
A driver for the vendor went to Zeno’s home to pick up more than $7,000 worth of the supplies, and Zeno repeatedly asked that the refund check go to her directly, claiming the Queens Defenders, referred to as “the organization” in court filings, had gone out of business, the feds allege.
She repeatedly asked the check be written and sent to her, at one point threatening legal action, and was so insistent that the vendor blocked her number, the feds allege. She’d also tried to return the items from the September purchase as well, but the company wouldn’t take them back.
“It is clear that both orders were paid for with Organization funds and that, after she was terminated from the Organization and indicted for stealing from it, Zeno tried to convince the Vendor to divert a refund check that was owed to the Organization to herself,” federal prosecutors wrote on Monday.
“In other words, Zeno has again attempted to steal from the Organization.”
Zeno’s lawyer, Anthony Ricco, declined comment Wednesday.
Zeno was released on $500,000 bond in June. Prosecutors want Judge Rachel Kovner to order stricter electronic and online monitoring, and bar her from speaking with any of the Queens Defenders’ vendors.
Zeno served as the executive director of the Queens Defenders from 2018 until she was forced out of the job in January and Ruhani was fired.
She hired Ruhani, who was paroled after 26 years in state prison in 2022 for a robbery conviction, as a client advocate in October 2023, and started a romance soon after, according to court documents. In August 2024, Zeno and Ruhani were married in a religious ceremony, though “both Zeno and Ruhani were married to other individuals,” prosecutors wrote in a June 11 filing.
Zeno promoted Ruhani in June 2024 to a position overseeing Queens Defenders’ youth programs, and she hired Ruhani’s relatives and associates, including his daughter, to positions where they “did little or no substantive work,” according to the the feds.
