{"id":199820,"date":"2026-04-16T20:25:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T20:25:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/199820\/"},"modified":"2026-04-16T20:25:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T20:25:09","slug":"ex-con-beau-of-disgraced-queens-defenders-founder-pleads-guilty-to-wire-fraud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/199820\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-con beau of disgraced Queens Defenders founder pleads guilty to wire fraud"},"content":{"rendered":"

The ex-con boyfriend of disgraced Queens Defenders founder Lori Zeno, plead guilty to his role in raiding hundreds of thousand<\/a>s of dollars from the public defender organization\u2019s coffers.<\/a><\/p>\n

Queens Defenders provides legal representation to criminal defendants who can\u2019t afford to hire lawyers, but Zeno and boyfriend Rashad Ruhani used the organization<\/a> as their personal piggy bank, stealing to pay the rent on their swanky $6,000-a-month Astoria penthouse apartment.<\/p>\n

They used the nonprofit\u2019s credit cards and the rewards points they accrued to pay for a honeymoon in Bali, buy items from Louis Vuitton, Bloomingdale\u2019s, Ralph Lauren and Neiman Marcus stores, and treat themselves to goodies<\/a> like a $3,300 85-inch television, a $2,600 steak dinner and $600 in teeth whitening.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, Ruhani, 56, pleaded guilty to wire fraud conspiracy. He could face roughly 5 to 6 years behind bars, based on federal guidelines, when sentenced July 14. He remains locked up in MDC Brooklyn.<\/p>\n

\"RashadRashad Ruhani seen in an image in court documents.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was issued a corporate card from Queens Defenders, which I used for personal expenditures,\u201d he told Magistrate Judge Vera Scanlon. \u201cI accessed funds that were not mine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zeno pleaded guilty to wire fraud conspiracy in February.<\/a><\/p>\n

Zeno hired Ruhani \u2014 who was paroled in 2022 after 26 years in state prison for a robbery conviction \u2014 as a client advocate in October 2023, and a romance bloomed soon after, according to the feds.<\/p>\n

\"FormerFormer Queens Defenders Executive Director Lori Zeno outside the Queens courthouse in 2020. (Kevin Hagen\/AP)<\/p>\n

She promoted him in June 2024 to a position overseeing Queens Defenders\u2019 youth programs, and hired hiss relatives and associates, including his daughter, to what were essentially no-show jobs. One job went to a woman Ruhani married about a decade earlier and who lives in Saudi Arabia. She never reported to work, according to prosecutors.<\/p>\n

By August 2024, Zeno and Ruhani were married in a religious ceremony, though \u201cboth Zeno and Ruhani were married to other individuals,\u201d prosecutors wrote in a June filing.<\/p>\n

Charges are still pending against a third suspect, Kimberly Osorio, who the feds say helped Ruhani get rid of a phone while on a flight to Kennedy Airport before the feds could serve him with a device warrant and take it when they landed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The ex-con boyfriend of disgraced Queens Defenders founder Lori Zeno, plead guilty to his role in raiding hundreds…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":199821,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[98,262,263,266,85,267,9,24,264,12,63,261,122,124,123,265],"class_list":{"0":"post-199820","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-queens","8":"tag-brooklyn","9":"tag-city","10":"tag-county","11":"tag-crime-and-public-safety","12":"tag-latest-headlines","13":"tag-local-news","14":"tag-new-york","15":"tag-new-york-city","16":"tag-new-york-county","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-nyc","19":"tag-nyc-crime","20":"tag-queens","21":"tag-queens-headlines","22":"tag-queens-news","23":"tag-sub-county-region"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199820\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}