Lori Zeno, 66, <\/a>claimed she was blinded by her feelings for her former employee-turned-co-defendant Rashad Ruhani, accusing him of pushing her to siphon from the non-profit to fund trips to Bali, luxury shopping sprees and a penthouse in Astoria.<\/p>\nQueends Defenders founder Lori Zeno arriving at Brooklyn federal court for her sentencing on July 28, 2026. Gregory P. Mango for NY Post<\/p>\n
\u201cThe man that swore before God that he loved me actually didn\u2019t, and the career I had spent over 40 years building ended in disgrace,\u201d a teary-eyed Zeno said in Brooklyn federal court.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was so filled with shame and humiliation that I cannot even describe it,\u201d she claimed.<\/p>\n
But the plea didn\u2019t seem to succeed in pulling Judge Rachel Kovner\u2019s heartstrings, as the jurist sentenced Zeno to 3-and-a-half years behind bars.<\/p>\n
According to federal prosecutors, Zeno hired Ruhani, 56, to work for Queens Defenders in October 2023, when she served as executive director for the organization, which provided legal aid and community support services to low-income borough residents.<\/p>\n
Zeno and Ruhani married in a religious ceremony and the pair embarked on their fraudulent scheme in summer 2024, the feds said.<\/p>\n
Zeno blamed her former employee and lover Rashad Ruhani (left) for pushing her to embezzle over $100,000 from her ogranization. X\/Queens Defenders<\/p>\n
Together, the lovebirds embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars from the legal group \u2014 blowing the cash on on foreign travel, fine dining and several other luxuries, prosecutors have said.<\/p>\n
Those included a $10,000 vacation to Bali, a $1,700 getaway to a Santa Monica luxury resort and a $3,300 85-inch TV that was installed in their penthouse pad, according to court papers.<\/p>\n
Zeno was leasing the $6,000-a-month apartment, and lived there with Ruhani, the documents show. He separately bilked the Queens Defenders of $39,000 to go toward their rent, claiming the penthouse was being used for \u201c\u2018client defend\u2019 and \u2018foster parent Care,’\u201d prosecutors wrote in the filings.<\/p>\n
Other fraudulent expenses included a $600 bill to pay for teeth whitening and charging the organization over $4,000 to buy a Louis Vuitton designer handbag, according to the indictment.<\/p>\n
Letters filed by public defenders called for Zeno to be locked up, calling the disgraced ex-attorney a \u201cpower-driven bully who ruled with intimidation.\u201d<\/p>\n
In one example, an attorney accused Zeno of secretly recording her underlings with hidden cameras and audio devices to intimidate the employees.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is difficult\u2014and goes against the very fiber of our professional identities\u2014to submit this statement to the Court and ask for the incarceration of another,\u201d one of the letters from a former Queens Defender staffer reads.<\/p>\n
Zeno also gave cushy no-show jobs to Ruhani\u2019s relatives, including hiring a woman he was apparently legally married to for a non-existent \u201chealth and wellness\u201d program position with a salary of $60,000, the feds have said.<\/p>\n
That incident eventually caused Queens Defenders to lose its city contract to provide criminal defense services to low-income New Yorkers, according to prosecutors.<\/p>\n
The judge ripped Zeno during the sentencing hearing as being responsible for the organization losing its $35 million city contract.<\/p>\n
Zeno seen leaving Brooklyn federal court after agreeing to a plea deal in her embezzlement case on Feb. 3, 2026. Gregory P. Mango for NY Post<\/p>\n
\u201cMs. Zeno was really the person who had the most power in the organization to make this happen,\u201d Kovner said, referring to hooking up Ruhani\u2019s relatives with bogus jobs.<\/p>\n
Ruhani was sentenced to about four years in prison during a separate proceeding shortly before Zeno\u2019s hearing.<\/p>\n
The ex-con \u2014 who previously spent 26 years behind bars on a robbery\u00a0conviction \u2014 apologized for stealing the money and vowed to do better when he gets out of prison.<\/p>\n
The judge ordered both defendants to pay $656,349 in restitution to the Queens Defenders. Zeno will additionally have to pay $187,000 in forfeiture and Ruhani will have fork over $103,000.<\/p>\n
The pair pleaded guilty this year to wire fraud.<\/p>\n
Zeno claimed behind tears that she was \u201cnot a stupid woman\u201d but an \u201cintelligent\u201d one, telling the court she was haunted by \u201cdemons\u201d that made her stray away from her morals and lose her promising career.<\/p>\n
She was ordered to surrender for her prison term on September 20.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He stole her heart. The founder of the Queens Defenders legal aid group \u2014 who admitted to embezzling…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":308212,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[11827,35410,396,9340,57,9,56,63,65,64,3209,58],"class_list":["post-308211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-brooklyn-federal-court","tag-embezzling","tag-fraud","tag-lawyers","tag-metro","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-sentencing","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308211","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=308211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308211\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}