Disgraced Queens Defenders founder Lori Zeno admitted Tuesday she used money from the public defender organization to fund a life of luxury with her ex-con boyfriend.
Zeno, 65, pleaded guilty to wire fraud conspiracy in Brooklyn Federal Court, admitting that she turned the legal organization’s accounts — meant to fund the criminal defense of people who can’t afford lawyers — into her and her boyfriend’s personal piggy bank.
“I agreed with another person to charge personal expenses to the corporate credit cards of Queens Defenders,” Zeno told Magistrate Judge Vera Scanlon Tuesday, adding that she mischaracterized the charges as business expenses.
“I did it intentionally to obtain money I knew I was not entitled to,” Zeno said.
Wire fraud conspiracy carries a maximum 20-year prison term. But based on federal guidelines, she’ll likely face between four and five years when she’s sentenced April 20.
Zeno was indicted alongside her boyfriend, Rashad Ruhani, in June, charged with using the Queens Defenders coffers to pay the rent for their $6,000-a-month Astoria penthouse apartment, go on vacations to Bali and Southern California, and buy luxury goods and dinners at fancy restaurants. Their ill-gotten purchases included an 85-inch television and designer clothes from Ralph Lauren, Louis Vuitton and Neiman Marcus, according to the feds.
And while she was out on bond, Zeno tried to get a refund paid directly to her for more than $7,000 in supplies she ordered through the organization last year, the feds alleged in September.
Though she stipulated to taking at least $150,000 as part of her plea agreement, a superseding indictment filed in December alleged the couple misappropriated at least $300,000.
Zeno initially planned to plead guilty on Jan. 20, but abruptly cut that hearing short before ultimately taking the plunge.
During Tuesday’s hearing, she told the judge she suffered from bipolar disorder and depression, and was a recovering alcoholic who attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings daily. She said she’d been hospitalized twice, including for alcoholism and psychiatric treatment a month before her indictment.
“The defendant brazenly betrayed and abused her position of trust as the director of a nonprofit, stealing funds that were meant for legal services for disadvantaged clients and members of the community and then spending those funds on luxury goods and expensive vacations,” U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella said Tuesday.
Zeno and her attorney, Steven Legon, declined comment. When asked if she had anything to say to her public defender clients, Legon said, “That will all be addressed at sentencing.”
Zeno hired Ruhani — who was paroled after 26 years in state prison in 2022 for a robbery conviction — as a client advocate in October 2023. They started a romance soon after, according to court documents.
She 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 what were essentially no-show jobs, according to the feds. One of those jobs went to a woman Ruhani had married about a decade earlier, the feds said. The woman, who lives in Saudi Arabia, never showed up for work, according to prosecutors.
By 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 filing.
Charges are still pending against Ruhani and a third suspect, Kimberly Osorio, who the feds say helped Ruhani get rid of a phone while on a flight to JFK Airport because the feds were going to serve him with a devices warrant when they landed.
