Indicted Queens Defenders founder accused of new theft while awaiting trial — Queens Daily Eagle

By Jacob Kaye

Lori Zeno, the former head of Queens Defenders accused of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars with her husband from the nonprofit she founded, has continued to siphon money from the organization as she awaits trial, according to the feds.

Prosecutors this week told a federal judge that Zeno, who was hit with fraud charges in June, attempted to steal another $7,000 last month from the public defender organization that has been reduced to a fraction of what it once was since Zeno’s arrest.

Zeno, who was released on a $500,000 bond three months ago, has since tried to return thousands of dollars of packing supplies she allegedly bought with a Queens Defenders credit card and pocket the cash, according to a filing from the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York. The feds said they weren’t sure why Zeno bought the packing supplies, which included large plastic bins, industrial package scales, a vacuum sealer, industrial packing tables, industrial steel shelving and a dozen knives.

Prosecutors said that when Zeno attempted to return some of the items, she got into an argument with the vendor about who the refund check should be made out to. Over a series of phone calls, Zeno allegedly told the vendor that even if the items were purchased in Queens Defenders’ name, the $7,000 for the refunded items should be returned to her, prosecutors said.

Even under threat of a lawsuit from Zeno, the vendor refused and sent a check to the public defender organization instead, according to the filing.

“It is clear that [the packing materials] were paid for with organization funds and that, after she was terminated from the organization and indicted for stealing from it, Zeno tried to convince the vendor to divert a refund check that was owed to the organization to herself,” the U.S. attorney said in the filing. “In other words, Zeno has again attempted to steal from the organization.”

Prosecutors said the latest alleged fraud attempt was evidence that Zeno can’t be trusted to await trial unsupervised. They asked a judge to order Zeno to wear an ankle monitor and to ban her from speaking with any vendor about purchases she made under the organization’s name. Prosecutors also asked a judge to allow them to monitor Zeno’s electronic devices.

Zeno and her husband, Rashad Ruhani, were charged in June for defrauding the Queens nonprofit Zeno helped create in the 1990s.

Prosecutors said the pair, who were wed in a religious ceremony and not legally married, stole at least $300,000 from the organization over the course of a year.

They allegedly used a Queens Defenders credit card to fund a $10,000 vacation to Bali, a teeth-whitening procedure, an evening at a high-end steakhouse and other personal purchases.

Zeno and Ruhani also allegedly used the organization to pay for their $6,000-a-month penthouse apartment in Astoria.

According to the latest filing, Zeno also used the company credit card to make two purchases from the packaging vendor in November and December 2024.

Prosecutors said Ruhani’s legal wife, Ureka Washington, put the items in a virtual shopping cart and sent them to her husband. Ruhani then allegedly sent the cart to Zeno, who dipped into Queens Defenders’ funds to buy the items.

Washington, who was allegedly given a no-show job with a $60,000 salary at Queens Defenders by Zeno and Ruhani, was fired alongside the now-indicted pair in January.

After emailing Ruhani to confirm the order had been placed, Zeno allegedly had the packing items shipped to a warehouse operated by Queens Defenders in Manhattan.

In all, Zeno spent over $14,500 of Queens Defenders’ money on the orders, according to the filing.

About six weeks after she had been indicted, Zeno allegedly called the vendor and asked to return some of the items, telling the company that the “[j]ob fell through and [the] items [were] no longer needed,” according to prosecutors.

Throughout August, Zeno made several calls to the vendor, attempting to get the refund check made out to her, the filing said.

The court document said that Zeno made such a fuss about the refund that the vendor eventually blocked her phone number.

After attempting to divert the stolen funds, Zeno allegedly lied to her assigned pretrial services officer about the ordeal.

The former executive director reportedly told the officer that after being contacted by someone at Queens Defenders about clearing out a storage unit where Zeno claimed the items were being held – they were allegedly actually being held in a shed at her house – she called the vendor to set up the return.

When the vendor offered to refund the items to a credit card that had since been cancelled, Zeno claimed that she first told the vendor to make the check out to her and that she would bring it to the nonprofit. When the vendor said they’d send the check directly to the organization, Zeno said that would be alright, according to the filing.

“These lies to pretrial services further demonstrate that Zeno cannot be trusted to follow her conditions of release and requires strict monitoring to ensure her compliance,” the filing read.

Zeno’s attorney did not respond to the Eagle’s request for comment on Wednesday.

Zeno’s husband has also allegedly had trouble abiding by the rules set out for him by a judge ahead of his trial.

Ruhani, who has been held in the Metropolitan Detention Center since his arrest at John F. Kennedy Airport in June, allegedly had been working to prevent the feds from searching his phone while he was incarcerated.

Just before he got onto a flight from Los Angeles to New York with an unnamed person on the day of his arrest, Ruhani allegedly got a call and was told that officers had begun searching the homes of other people involved in the investigation.

Though they tracked his phone from LA to John F. Kennedy International Airport, FBI agents said they couldn’t find it when they arrested Ruhani – the former Queens Defenders employee had no electronic devices on him but was carrying two iPhone chargers, prosecutors said.

The officers allegedly went looking for the person he was traveling with, who had stayed behind on the flight after Ruhani got off.

Prosecutors say the person “lied to the FBI agent,” claiming that they were traveling alone and that the only electronic devices they had were their own.

But in their ongoing investigation, the feds found that Ruhani had been making calls to the person he was traveling with and made it apparent that the person had his phone and was using it at Ruhani’s direction, according to a July filing from prosecutors.

“Based on the investigation, it is apparent that the defendant provided his electronic devices, including the [phone], to Individual-1 prior to exiting the…flight in order to prevent law enforcement authorities from seizing those devices, that Individual-1 exited separately from the defendant in order to distance herself from potential scrutiny by law enforcement, and that the defendant and Individual-1 continued to coordinate and use the concealed [phone] while the defendant was incarcerated at the MDC,” the filing read.

Zeno’s alleged attempt to steal an additional $7,000 from Queens Defenders comes as the organization lost out on a significant city contract because of Zeno’s plundering of the group’s finances.

A $32 million criminal defense contract once held by Queens Defenders was transferred over to Brooklyn Defender Services in March, two months after Zeno and Ruhani had been kicked out of Queens Defenders by the organization’s board and three months before the reasons behind their ouster would be made public.

Zeno, who pulled in a $490,000 salary from the nonprofit in 2023, is due back in court on Oct. 20.