Lori Zeno, who founded Queens Defenders in 1996, is accused by prosecutors of diverting funds primarily generated through city, state and federal contracts that were supposed to be used to provide legal services to low-income New Yorkers to finance a luxurious lifestyle, including spending on foreign travel, meals, luxury shopping and rent for a penthouse apartment, alongside her former partner, Rashad Ruhani.
Zeno, 66, cried while reading a statement of remorse to U.S. District Judge Rachel Kovner, asking for a lenient sentence. She said that while she took responsibility for her actions, they were influenced by untreated addiction and alcoholism.
She also blamed Ruhani, 56, who she claimed manipulated her into improperly using the legal service providers’ funds.
“I am so very sorry for my actions,” Zeno said, adding that there were “demons deep inside her” that had pushed her to do what she did. “God is the only one who can forgive me because I can never forgive myself … There were days when I didn’t even want to live because I thought I didn’t deserve to,” after her misconduct came to light.
“I fought for people who couldn’t fight for themselves,” she added. “Alcoholism takes everything from you … I want to be able to help again.”
Her sentencing also requires her to pay just over $650,000 in restitution to the organization to help repay what she stole and rebuild the legal service provider’s operations.
Zeno was sentenced just hours after Ruhani, who got 57 months in prison for the crimes. The two pleaded guilty this past spring.
Zeno’s attorney, Anthony Ricco, also argued that she should receive a more lenient sentence because the amount of good she put into the world running a public defense organization for 30 years should not outweigh what he characterized as six to eight months of bad decisions. He said that she was being pushed by Ruhani to use the organization’s funds to benefit him and a luxury lifestyle they shared.
“All the good things you did in life should be brought to attention [at sentencing],” Ricco said, adding that her mental health issues and Ruhani’s alleged manipulation shouldn’t be seen as “excuses” for what she did, but as an explanation. “It’s very difficult to spend a lifetime committed to working to something and watch it [fall apart] in six months,”
However, court filings made the day before her sentencing paint a different picture.
Queens Defenders staffers who worked under Zeno and those now leading the destabilized organization filed a flurry of what are known as victim impact statements, pushing for a maximum sentence of 63 months.
Those who worked with her say she was “a power-driven bully,” retaliated against those who sought advancement, left many who worked for her with PTSD and had treated the Queens Defenders as her “personal piggy bank” since at least 2007.
“I have watched [Zeno] conduct herself like Queens Law Associates, or Queens Defenders, was her personal piggy bank, to run as she saw fit, without any obligations to its funders, employees, or clients, committing fraud to satisfy her own personal selfish interests,” wrote attorney Naira Grigoryan. “She overpaid herself, her two children, her former boyfriend Frank … and then her new husband Rashad and all of his family and associates.”
Grigoryan said the narrative that Zeno was forced by Ruhani to defraud and steal from the organization is untrue.
“She’s painting herself as a philanthropist and asking the Court for leniency based on all the lives that she saved,” Grigoryan wrote. “But ask any of the attorneys who worked in that office … She prided herself with breaking people down until they submitted to her or quit. That’s why she got away with years of fraud, and this Prosecution barely scratches the surface of its extent.”
Those who are working to keep the Queens Defenders running after Zeno’s prosecution and theft also pushed the judge to give Zeno a hefty sentence, saying her actions toppling the critical legal services organization left thousands of Queens residents without the legal resources and community support they needed and resulted in an immediate aftermath of chaos as jobs were lost and clients had to be reassigned mid-trial.
“Lori Zeno did not just steal funds; she weaponized her position of trust to destroy an embedded and impactful provider within the Queens justice system,” the Queens Defenders wrote in a court document filed Monday night. “While our clients were facing the most terrifying moments of their lives—facing criminal charges and fighting for their freedom—the defendant was using the funds meant for their defense to finance a life of obscene luxury.”
Kovner’s sentence is uncommon in that it is under the recommended minimum of 51 months. The judge said she took both the “severity of the crime” and Zeno’s mental health issues and family obligations into account when issuing her sentence, but didn’t buy the argument that Ruhani manipulated the former nonprofit founder into stealing from her own organization – Zeno “had the most power in the organization to make this happen,” the judge said.
“The organization lost its contract with the city and … [Zeno’s] actions created an enormous services gap,” Kovner said, adding that Queens lost not only legal services but a food pantry, jobs and other community services, and now the organization is always “associated” with scandal.
However, the judge said she “agree[ed] with Ms. Zeno that she has a lot to contribute,” after the former attorney gets out of prison, referencing Zeno’s speech in which she said she believed she still had a lot to give to the community.
Zeno will have to surrender to the state’s Bureau of Prisons on Sept. 28.