Former Queens Defenders boss admits to stealing over $100,000 from nonprofit

By Jacob Kaye

The co-founder and former executive director of Queens Defenders on Tuesday admitted in federal court to stealing over $100,000 from the taxpayer-funded nonprofit that provides legal defense services to New Yorkers who can’t otherwise afford it.

Lori Zeno pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud, telling a federal magistrate judge that she and her husband, Rashad Ruhani, used a company credit card to fund luxury vacations, designer-clothes shopping sprees and trips to high-end restaurants. The duo also submitted fraudulent invoices to the organization to get it to pay for the rent on their penthouse apartment in Astoria, claiming the abode was used for clients.

“They were not in fact business expenses,” Zeno, 65, said on Tuesday. “I did it intentionally to obtain money I knew I was not entitled to.”

Zeno now faces between four and five years in prison.

Zeno’s guilty plea comes almost exactly a year after she was put on leave from the organization by Queens Defenders’ board of directors, who barred the former executive director – who was paid over half a million dollars by the organization the year before the theft began – from entering into the group’s buildings and from talking to her former employees.

The reason for Zeno’s departure wouldn’t be known until June, when Zeno and Ruhani, who also worked at Queens Defenders, were arrested and accused of stealing tens of thousands of dollars from the organization. Over the next several months, the scale of the theft would grow. Though Zeno admitted to stealing at least $150,000 from the organization – an amount she’ll have to pay back – together, the pair were accused of pilfering over $400,000 by prosecutors in a December superseding indictment.

Zeno told the judge she wanted to switch her plea a week after the new indictment was filed.

“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,” United States Attorney Joseph Nocella said in a statement.

Zeno’s attorney, Steven Legon, said the plea hearing marked a “very sad moment for Lori Zeno,” whom he described as an “accomplished attorney.”

Zeno practiced law for around 30 years and helped to found Queens Defenders in the 1990s as then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani was looking for non-unionized public defender organizations to take over city contracts given to the Legal Aid Society, whose attorneys were preparing to strike.

Zeno remained with the organization for decades and assumed control of it in 2018, when she was named its executive director. Her tenure atop Queens Defenders was fraught with tensions between her and the organization’s attorneys and staff.

In 2021, she was accused of firing two staffers because they were attempting to unionize the public defense group and, in a lawsuit also filed that year by a former Queens Defenders employee, Zeno was accused of fostering an “abusive work environment.”

Her downfall began in June 2024, shortly after her relationship with Ruhani began – Zeno hired Ruhani in 2023, around a year after he had completed a 26-year prison sentence for a robbery conviction.

Zeno and Ruhani, who were legally wed to other people, got married in a religious ceremony not recognized by the state, prosecutors said. To celebrate their nuptials, the pair departed for a $10,000 Bali honeymoon on Queens Defenders’ dime.

The vacation appeared to stick with Zeno. During a phone interview with the Eagle in March 2025, several months before her arrest, the attorney said she wanted to “fly off to Bali somewhere and live the rest of my life in peace.”

Their illegal spending allegedly continued when they returned to New York.

They allegedly racked up a $1,300 bill at a high-end restaurant and spent thousands of dollars on designer goods, including a $4,000 Louis Vuitton handbag.

To cover up their spending, Zeno and Ruhani allegedly hired two employees whose only responsibility at their no-show jobs was to sign off on the fraudulent invoices. One of the people hired was Ruhani’s legal wife, who was paid a $60,000 salary, prosecutors allege.

Zeno allegedly attempted to continue stealing from the organization after her arrest by trying to return $7,000 worth of goods she purchased with the Queens Defenders credit card and pocket the cash for herself. Though a judge admonished her in October, Zeno was allowed to remain out on bond while her case progressed through court.

The theft had major consequences for Queens Defenders, which lost its $32 million city contract to provide criminal defense to indigent defendants. The contract was transferred in July 2025 to Brooklyn Defender Services, which also assumed control of one of Queens Defenders’ offices.

Zeno initially pleaded not guilty to the charges but said in December that she wanted to switch her plea.

Zeno initially was scheduled to plead guilty to the single count of wire fraud in January, but after getting halfway through the hearing, requested it be postponed. Zeno became teary during both her first and second hearings when the magistrate judge began to ask her if she was prepared to admit to the crimes.

Though Legon declined to comment directly about the guilty plea on Tuesday, he said that Zeno would have “a lot to say at sentencing,” which was scheduled for April 20.

“Stay tuned,” he said.

Ruhani has not indicated that he plans to plead guilty in the case and is currently scheduled to go to trial in June. Unlike Zeno, Ruhani has been held in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn since his arrest last year.

A third defendant, media personality Kimberly Osorio, is facing allegations that she helped Ruhani hide a cell phone from the feds as they began to make arrests in the case.

She pleaded not guilty in December.