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He stole her heart.
The founder of the Queens Defenders legal aid group — who admitted to embezzling more than $100,000 from her own organization to fuel a lavish lifestyle — blamed her ex-con lover as she was sentenced to federal prison Tuesday.
Lori Zeno, 66, 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.
“The man that swore before God that he loved me actually didn’t, and the career I had spent over 40 years building ended in disgrace,” a teary-eyed Zeno said in Brooklyn federal court.
“I was so filled with shame and humiliation that I cannot even describe it,” she claimed.
But the plea didn’t seem to succeed in pulling Judge Rachel Kovner’s heartstrings, as the jurist sentenced Zeno to 3-and-a-half years behind bars.
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.
Zeno and Ruhani married in a religious ceremony and the pair embarked on their fraudulent scheme in summer 2024, the feds said.
Together, the lovebirds embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars from the legal group — blowing the cash on on foreign travel, fine dining and several other luxuries, prosecutors have said.
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.
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 “‘client defend’ and ‘foster parent Care,'” prosecutors wrote in the filings.
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.
Letters filed by public defenders called for Zeno to be locked up, calling the disgraced ex-attorney a “power-driven bully who ruled with intimidation.”
In one example, an attorney accused Zeno of secretly recording her underlings with hidden cameras and audio devices to intimidate the employees.
“It is difficult—and goes against the very fiber of our professional identities—to submit this statement to the Court and ask for the incarceration of another,” one of the letters from a former Queens Defender staffer reads.
Zeno also gave cushy no-show jobs to Ruhani’s relatives, including hiring a woman he was apparently legally married to for a non-existent “health and wellness” program position with a salary of $60,000, the feds have said.
That incident eventually caused Queens Defenders to lose its city contract to provide criminal defense services to low-income New Yorkers, according to prosecutors.
The judge ripped Zeno during the sentencing hearing as being responsible for the organization losing its $35 million city contract.
“Ms. Zeno was really the person who had the most power in the organization to make this happen,” Kovner said, referring to hooking up Ruhani’s relatives with bogus jobs.
Ruhani was sentenced to about four years in prison during a separate proceeding shortly before Zeno’s hearing.
The ex-con — who previously spent 26 years behind bars on a robbery conviction — apologized for stealing the money and vowed to do better when he gets out of prison.
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.
The pair pleaded guilty this year to wire fraud.
Zeno claimed behind tears that she was “not a stupid woman” but an “intelligent” one, telling the court she was haunted by “demons” that made her stray away from her morals and lose her promising career.
She was ordered to surrender for her prison term on September 20.
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