Lori Zeno, the disgraced founder of the Queens Defenders, is expected to plead guilty in her federal fraud case, according to a recent court filing.
Zeno was indicted alongside her ex-con boyfriend, Rashad Ruhani, in June on charges they raided the public defender organization’s coffers to support a luxury lifestyle 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.
A superseding indictment filed this month alleged they misappropriated at least $300,000.
On Tuesday, federal prosecutors filed a letter to Brooklyn Federal Court Judge Rachel Kovner, stating that Zeno’s lawyer indicated she wants to enter a guilty plea, and proposing a possible Jan. 5 hearing date.
Zeno’s lawyer, Anthony Ricco, confirmed that his client was planning to plead guilty.
“I would just say that she’s accepted responsibility for her conduct,” Ricco told the Daily News Tuesday. “That has been our position since she has been arrested in this case.”
It’s not clear what charges she’ll plead guilty to, and what her potential sentence might be. A spokesman for U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella declined comment Tuesday.
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 in 2022 after 26 years in state prison for a robbery conviction — as a client advocate in October 2023, and started a romance soon after, according to court documents.
Zeno promoted Ruhani in June 2024 to a position overseeing Queens Defenders’ youth programs, the feds allege. She also hired Ruhani’s relatives and associates, including his daughter, to positions where they “did little or no substantive work,” according to court filings.
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.
As part of the 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. The woman, who lives in Saudi Arabia, never showed up for work, according to prosecutors.
The charges 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, are still pending.
