By Noah Powelson<\/p>\n
Rashad Ruhani pleaded guilty to wire fraud on Thursday, after admitting to spending hundreds of thousands of dollars that belonged to Queens Defenders, the legal nonprofit where he worked alongside Lori Zeno, his wife and the organization\u2019s executive director. <\/p>\n
It was a lengthy proceeding in the mostly empty courtroom in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, as Ruhani pleaded guilty to a wire fraud charge and admitted that he and Zeno stole from the Queens nonprofit and used its funds to pay for personal expenses, including a honeymoon vacation in Bali. <\/p>\n
He now faces a minimum of 4 years and 9 months and a maximum of nearly six years in prison. <\/p>\n
Ruhani\u2019s guilty plea comes around two months after Zeno pleaded guilty in the case that decimated Queens Defenders, which had to shutter its criminal practice after the city ended a $32 million contract it had with the organization because of the pair\u2019s wrongdoing. \t<\/p>\n
Ruhani, who has been held in Metropolitan Detention Center since his arrest last June, was escorted into the courtroom wearing his brown prison uniform on Thursday. He briefly looked at the audience made up of reporters and government staff before quickly taking a seat. Ruhani fidgeted throughout the proceedings, and gave simple straightforward answers as the magistrate judge explained the charges and the potential consequences of the plea deal.<\/p>\n
During the hearing, Ruhani was asked to describe the crime for which he was pleading guilty to, and admitted he used a Queens Defender company credit card to make a series of personal purchases from June 2024 through June 2025. Ruhani did not describe the exact purchases he made, but admitted he had no authority to make them.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knowingly and willingly used funds that were not mine,\u201d Ruhani said.<\/p>\n
As the hearing continued after his plea, Ruhani\u2019s voice was audibly shaky at several points as he continued to give answers. <\/p>\n
Ruhani made the plea agreement before Chief Magistrate Judge Vera Scanlon. The plea agreement and sentencing guidelines the government put forward will now be handed over to District Court Judge Rachel Kovner, who has been overseeing the case and will make the final sentencing determination. <\/p>\n
As part of the plea deal, Ruhani now faces between roughly four to six years prison time. He was originally facing up to eight years in prison. He also faces a maximum fine of $250,000. <\/p>\n
Ruhani only pleaded guilty for wire fraud, and not the other charges the government initially leveled against him including theft, money laundering, obstruction of justice and concealment of evidence.<\/p>\n
Elena Fast, Ruhani\u2019s attorney, declined to comment on Ruhani\u2019s plea deal.<\/p>\n
Ruhani is scheduled to be sentenced on July 14. <\/p>\n
A third defendant in the case, music journalist and former editor-in-chief of The Source magazine Kimberly Osorio, has stuck with her not guilty plea. While she\u2019s not accused of stealing from the organization, federal prosecutors claim she hid a phone for Ruhani just before his arrest at John F. Kennedy International Airport last year. <\/p>\n
Neither Zeno nor Osorio were present in court on Thursday during Ruhani\u2019s plea.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors allege the couple stole at least $400,000 from the nonprofit, which earned most of its cash through taxpayer funded city contracts. <\/p>\n
Ruhani joined Queens Defenders in 2023 shortly after he was released from a 26-year prison sentence he served for a 1996 robbery. It was his third violent felony conviction at the time, and he was under lifetime parole before his arrest last year. \t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Noah Powelson Rashad Ruhani pleaded guilty to wire fraud on Thursday, after admitting to spending hundreds of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":200908,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-200907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200907","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=200907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200907\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}