{"id":349740,"date":"2026-09-17T23:39:02","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T23:39:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/349740\/"},"modified":"2026-09-17T23:39:02","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T23:39:02","slug":"hip-hop-journalist-pleads-guilty-to-lying-to-fbi-in-queens-defenders-probe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/349740\/","title":{"rendered":"Hip-hop journalist pleads guilty to lying to FBI in Queens Defenders probe"},"content":{"rendered":"

A media personality and hip-hop journalist<\/a> tied to the embezzlement scandal that took down Queens Defenders founder Lori Zeno admitted Thursday she lied to the FBI and helped Zeno\u2019s boyfriend hide a phone from the feds.<\/p>\n

Kim Osorio, 52, was traveling with Zeno\u2019s ex-con boyfriend,<\/a> Rashad Ruhani, the day of his arrest, and she helped Ruhani get rid of a phone while on a flight to Kennedy Airport before the FBI could grab it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI made a materially false statement to a federal agent when I denied taking possession of Rashad Ruhani\u2019s cell phone,\u201d she admitted in Brooklyn Federal court Thursday.<\/p>\n

She and Ruhani were in a \u201cromantic relationship,\u201d according to court filings.<\/a><\/p>\n

Osorio, the first female editor-in-chief of The Source magazine, won an $8 million verdict<\/a> against the magazine in 2006, after a jury found she was wrongfully fired for complaining about sexual harassment on the job.<\/p>\n

A Fordham University and New York Law School graduate, she wrote a memoir in 2008 and appeared on the VH1 reality series, \u201cThe Gossip Game,\u201d<\/a> in 2013.<\/p>\n

\"NEWKim Osorio attends VH1’s “The Impact New York” Series Premiere at Lavan Chelsea on Jan. 18, 2024 in New York. (Photo by Johnny Nunez\/WireImage)<\/p>\n

The feds indicted her in October, alleging she broke the law when she helped Ruhani. She tried to get her statements to FBI agents and evidence from her home suppressed, but a judge denied that motion on Aug. 27, leading to Thursday\u2019s guilty plea to a single count of making a false statement.<\/p>\n

She faces up to a year and four months behind bars, based on a federal guideline estimate, when she\u2019s sentenced Dec. 28. She remains free on $25,000 bond.<\/p>\n

Zeno, 65, and Ruhani, 56, stole hundreds of thousands of dollars<\/a> from the Queens Defenders\u2019 coffers and gave Ruhani\u2019s relatives no-show jobs as they used the public defender organization\u2019s accounts to pay for their luxe lifestyle and a $6,000-a-month Astoria penthouse apartment.<\/p>\n

The former Queens Defenders head was sentenced in July to three years and seven months, while Ruhani, who\u2019s on lifetime parole for a robbery conviction, was sentenced to four years and nine months.<\/p>\n

Osorio\u2019s romance with Ruhani started in April 2025, just two months before Ruhani\u2019s arrest, according to court filings.<\/p>\n

Ruhani had been married to another woman living in Saudi Arabia for about a decade, and had also married Zeno in a religious ceremony, but prosecutors don\u2019t believe that their marriage was legally recognized.<\/p>\n

Osorio and Ruhani flew to Los Angeles on June 6, 2025, and returned on a JetBlue Flight to Kennedy Airport on June 10.<\/p>\n

The feds got a warrant to track Ruhani\u2019s phone a few days earlier, according to court documents. They were tracking it as he and Osorio flew back to New York, and one of Ruhani\u2019s associates was raided by the feds. That associate called Ruhani while he was still in the air.<\/p>\n

A flurry of phone activity followed. Osorio used her phone to text someone named \u201cSonny,\u201d then apparently passed the phone to Ruhani, and Sonny warned him, \u201cThey prolly gon be there waiting for u when u land[.],\u201d according to court filings.<\/p>\n

Osorio\u2019s phone was used during the flight to look up Ruhani\u2019s name and topics like \u201cwire fraud\u201d and \u201cfederal fund misappropriation.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the plane landed, Ruhani and Osorio left separately, and when the feds arrested Ruhani, he had two cellphone chargers, but no phone.<\/p>\n

The FBI found Osorio in a public concourse of the airport and confronted her. She started recording the encounter with her phone and repeatedly told them she wasn\u2019t answering questions without an attorney present, but claimed she didn\u2019t have anyone else\u2019s phone on her.<\/p>\n

The next day, the FBI interviewed her at the Brooklyn Federal Court building, where she had hoped to be a potential suretor for Ruhani. She admitted to traveling with him but denied taking his phone.<\/p>\n

In jailhouse calls with Ruhani, she had conversations alluding to, but never specifically mentioning, the phone, according to court filings. And on June 13, 2025, two days after her FBI interview, she searched on the internet for \u201clil Kim perjury\u201d and \u201cevidence cell phone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rapper Lil\u2019 Kim got sentenced to a year and a day behind bars for lying to a federal grand jury about a February 2001 shooting outside the Hot 97 studio in Manhattan.<\/p>\n

Osorio and her attorney declined comment Thursday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A media personality and hip-hop journalist tied to the embezzlement scandal that took down Queens Defenders founder Lori…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":349741,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[262,263,266,85,267,9,24,264,12,63,261,122,124,123,265],"class_list":["post-349740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-city","tag-county","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-county","tag-news","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-crime","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news","tag-sub-county-region"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349740","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=349740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349740\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/349741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}