The founder of the Queens Defenders and her husband have lawyered up after they were indicted by a federal grand jury for allegedly stealing tens of thousands of dollars from the non-profit organization.
Former Queens Defenders executive director Lori Zeno, 64, surrendered Wednesday at the Brooklyn federal courthouse. Zeno was arraigned on an indictment charging her and Rashad Ruhani, 55, with wire fraud conspiracy, theft, money laundering conspiracy and other crimes.
Queens Defenders is a Jamaica-based nonprofit that provides free criminal defense to low-income Queens residents through city contracts. In addition to representing thousands of clients, the organization runs programs focused on youth, reentry and alternatives to incarceration.
According to the indictment unsealed on June 11 in Brooklyn federal court, between June 2024 and January 2025, Zeno and Ruhani misappropriated more than $60,000 of the organization’s funds to enrich themselves and others. They charged personal shopping and travel expenses on Queens Defenders’ credit cards and received reimbursements from the organization for rent at a luxury penthouse apartment in Astoria.
Zeno hired Ruhani to work at Queens Defenders, and they were married in August 2024. She began to hire Ruhani’s relatives and associates for low-show or no-show jobs. Based in part on their misappropriations of the organization’s funds, Zeno was suspended by the board of directors, and Ruhani was fired.
The FBI and the city’s Department of Investigations launched a probe that found that over six months, the couple used the non-profit’s credit cards to pay for thousands of dollars of purchases at luxury clothing stores, including Louis Vuitton, Bloomingdale’s, Ralph Lauren and Neiman Marcus. They also used the credit cards to pay for repairs on Ruhani’s Mercedes-Benz, teeth whitening procedures for themselves and an 85-inch smart television for their penthouse apartment.
They also used the credit cards to pay for personal travel, including their honeymoon trip to Bali, where they used the cards to pay for lodging at a luxury hotel, food and jewelry. In December 2024, Zeno used a Queens Defenders credit card to pay for expenses at a resort in Santa Monica, including food, alcohol and use of a vehicle, along with DoorDash deliveries to the resort.
The couple also submitted fraudulent requests to the Queens Defenders to obtain reimbursements for the Astoria penthouse apartment. Zelo claimed the purpose of the apartment was to provide housing for a homeless minor without disclosing that they were living there. They also used Queens Defenders’ credit cards to pay for parking there, which they sometimes improperly reported as a business expense. Between August and October 2024, Ruhani requested and received more than $39,000 in reimbursements for rent at the penthouse apartment.
Zeno, who earned more than $400,000 a year as executive director of Queens Defenders, was fired by the board in December following an internal review. She was arraigned in Brooklyn federal court on Wednesday, and her attorney, Anthony Ricco, entered a plea of not guilty on her behalf to the charges in the indictment. She was released on a $500,000 bond co-signed by her son, her sister and her brother-in-law and ordered to return to court on June 25.
The FBI arrested Ruhani at JFK Airport on June 10, after returning to Queens on a flight from California. He was arraigned the following day in Brooklyn federal court and ordered detained.
On the same day Ruhani was arraigned, another scandal hit the Queens Defenders, when staff attorney Bernardo Caceres was arrested on Rikers Island and charged with promoting prison contraband.
Caceres entered the Otis Bantum Correctional Center of Rikers to visit a client who is detained at Rikers on a burglary charge. At a security checkpoint, a K-9 dog alerted her handler to a yellow envelope placed near the sign-in book. A Correction Officer removed the items from the envelope and discovered multiple discolored legal-sized papers. Caceres was detained, and an officer from the Correction Intelligence Bureau (CIB) removed the materials for further testing, which determined the 130 pages had been soaked in THC, the main psychoactive component in cannabis.
“The fact that this attorney would brazenly attempt to smuggle in a large quantity of THC into one of our biggest jails is further proof of why paper documents brought by visitors should be scanned and downloaded electronically onto tablets before entering our facilities,” New York City Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association President Benny Biscio said. “This attorney should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But allowing paper documents to continue to enter our facility only compromises the safety of everyone in our jails.”
