Rashad Ruhani, left, is expected to plead guilty to a slew of charges related to accusations that he and his wife, Lori Zeno, stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from Queens Defenders. File photo via Queens Defenders/X
By Jacob Kaye
Rashad Ruhani, a former Queens Defenders employee, is expected to plead guilty to stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from the public defender group with the help of his wife, the organization’s former executive director, Lori Zeno.
Ruhani, who pleaded not guilty to wire fraud, theft, money laundering, obstruction of justice and concealment of evidence charges in December, is expected to switch his plea later this month in federal court and admit to stealing, with Zeno, at least $400,000 from the Queens nonprofit.
He was originally facing up to eight years in prison.
Ruhani will be the second person in the case to switch his plea before trial, which is currently scheduled for June.
Zeno pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud in February after initially entering a not guilty plea in the case that shook Queens’ legal community and resulted in the decimation of Queens Defenders’ criminal practice.
A third defendant in the case, media personality Kimberly Osorio, is accused of helping Ruhani hide his phone from FBI agents. She pleaded not guilty in December.
Elena Fast, Ruhani’s attorney, declined to comment on Ruhani’s plea change.
Ruhani and Zeno were arrested in June 2025 after prosecutors said the pair used a company credit card to fund their $10,000 honeymoon in Bali, a number of meals at high-end restaurants, designer shopping sprees, and a $3,000 TV for their penthouse apartment in Astoria, which they allegedly also schemed to get Queens Defenders to pay for.
During her February plea hearing, Zeno suggested that Ruhani was responsible for the bulk of the theft. While she said she stole around $150,000 from the nonprofit, which was primarily funded by city taxpayer dollars, she didn’t account for the remaining $250,000 the couple was accused of pilfering.
While not legally married, Ruhani and Zeno were wed in a religious ceremony not long after the former executive director hired Ruhani to work as a client advocate at the public defense firm she helped create nearly three decades ago.
He was hired shortly after his release from a 25-year prison sentence he served for a 1996 robbery, his third violent felony conviction at the time. Prior to his June arrest, Ruhani was under lifetime parole supervision.
According to prosecutors, Ruhani and Zeno charged a number of personal expenses to a Queens Defenders credit card. They also used reward points from the card to fund luxury vacations.
The couple also allegedly claimed that their $6,000-a-month penthouse apartment in Astoria was being used for work and submitted monthly rent invoices to the organization, which Queens Defenders paid out.
Prosecutors said Zeno and Ruhani also worked together to hire several people to work lucrative no-show jobs, including Ruhani’s legal wife, Ureka Washington.
Ruhani, Washington and former staffer Teyana Reyes were fired by Queens Defenders’ board of directors in January. Zeno was put on leave at the time, but was later fired after being arrested.
In a superseding indictment filed in December, federal prosecutors also brought charges against Osorio, a music journalist who formerly worked as editor-in-chief of The Source magazine.
According to the indictment, Osorio lied to FBI agents about her efforts to hide Ruhani’s cellphone, which he allegedly gave her as the pair traveled back to New York from Los Angeles.
Rashad Ruhani is expected to plead guilty to stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from Queens Defenders. Photo via court filing
During their June 10 flight, Ruhani allegedly got word that officers had begun executing search warrants related to the theft.
Despite sitting next to each other on the flight and in Los Angeles International Airport before it, Ruhani and Osorio were not together when Ruhani got off the plane at John F. Kennedy International Airport and was immediately arrested. While he allegedly had two phone chargers on him, Ruhani didn’t have a phone.
Osorio allegedly got off the plane a few minutes later and went to sit in a nearby gate for a while before attempting to leave the airport. Just before leaving JFK, Osorio was confronted by an FBI agent. The media personality allegedly took out her phone to begin recording the conversation.
Osorio allegedly told the agent that she had been traveling alone and that all the electronic devices she had belonged to her. Prosecutors say that Osorio showed up to Ruhani’s arraignment the following day and told FBI agents there that she actually had traveled from Los Angeles with the man but maintained that she did not take his phone.
Two days after the arrest, Ruhani allegedly called Osorio from the Metropolitan Detention Center, where he is being held. During the call, which was recorded, Ruhani allegedly asked Osorio to contact someone on his behalf. Ruhani allegedly said that Osorio should “go to the phone that you have” to look up the person’s number. The feds said Osorio then talked to Ruhani the next day and told him that she had gotten the number and had spoken with the unidentified person.
FBI agents searched Osorio’s home on July 2, and while they didn’t find Ruhani’s phone, they claimed they found a note that proved Osorio was planning to cover up the fact that she lied to the officer about having Ruhani’s phone.
Prosecutors said the note indicated that Osorio, who allegedly has a law degree but is not a practicing attorney, planned to describe Ruhani’s phone as a gift that he had given her.
“Not lying,” the note reads. “Gift if I give you.”
Ruhani is expected to enter his plea change on April 16. Zeno is scheduled to be sentenced to between four and five years in prison on June 29.
