Rashad Ruhani, a former client advocate with Queens Defenders, pleaded guilty to conspiring with the organization’s former executive director Lori Zeno to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars from the public defender group.
The plea comes after Zeno, Ruhani’s wife, pleaded guilty to wire fraud conspiracy charges in February. Unlike Zeno, Ruhani, 56, entered court in handcuffs and a beige jumpsuit after his bail was denied and he was held in detention following his arrest in June.
Prosecutors said the pair misappropriated at least $300,000 from the borough-based organization that provides legal services to low-income clients, over the course of a year and a half, according to a superseding indictment they filed in December.
“I was issued a corporate card, which I used for personal expenditures that were falsely characterized as business expenditures,” Ruhani said before Chief Magistrate Judge Vera M. Scanlon of the Eastern District of New York.
Like Zeno, Ruhani stipulated to taking at least $150,000 as part of his plea agreement. Federal prosecutors are pushing for a five- to six-year prison sentence for Ruhani.
From June 2024 and January 2025, prosecutors allege, the couple diverted the legal service funds — which largely flow from city, state and federal contracts — to finance their lavish spending on foreign travel, meals, luxury shopping and rent for a penthouse apartment.
According to court filings, Zeno and Ruhani began a romantic relationship after she hired him in 2023 as a client advocate. She quickly promoted him to a position managing the organization’s youth program in 2024 — the same summer the couple were wed in a religious ceremony, but not legally married.
The pair allegedly used the company credit card to spend over $10,000 on a honeymoon vacation to Bali, $3,300 for an 85-inch smart television to be installed at the Penthouse Apartment and $4,000 for a Louis Vuitton designer handbag, among other expenses.
Elena Fast, Ruhani’s attorney, declined to comment on Ruhani’s plea change.
Ruhani initially pleaded not guilty to wire fraud, theft, money laundering, obstruction of justice and concealment of evidence charges, which prosecutors added to a superseding indictment after his arrest.
The court denied Ruhani bail after considering his criminal history. Ruhani took a job at the Queens Defenders a year after he finished serving a 26-year prison sentence for a robbery conviction — his third violent felony conviction.
The third suspect in the indictment, Kimberly Osorio, is being charged with blocking evidence and making false statements after the feds say she helped Ruhani dispose of his cell phone as he was flying back to JFK Airport where the police were waiting to arrest him with a search warrant for his phone.
