Hip-hop journalist tied to Queens Defenders fraud case challenges FBI tactics
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Federal prosecutors say Kimberly Osorio (right) hid evidence for Rashad Ruhani, who is accused of helping to steal at least $400,000 from nonprofit legal services group Queens Defenders. Photo via court filing
By Jacob Kaye
Kimberly Osorio, the media personality who allegedly hid a cell phone for a Queens man accused of helping to steal $400,000 from legal nonprofit Queens Defenders, asked a judge to toss much of the evidence federal prosecutors plan to bring against her at trial.
Osorio’s attorney, Adam Bolotin, filed a motion to suppress a bulk of the evidence prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office in the Eastern District of New York are expected to use to attempt to prove that Osorio hid evidence for Rashad Ruhani, a former Queens Defenders employee who, alongside former executive director Lori Zeno, was charged last year for stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from the organization.
Bolotin claimed that FBI agents who interrogated Osorio at John F. Kennedy Airport on June 10, 2025, and later the next day, did so illegally.
The attorney claimed that the interrogations and a later search of Osorio’s home were conducted without probable cause. The FBI agents also failed to read Osorio her Miranda rights, the motion alleges.
“If the government is going to charge anyone in this country with a crime, then the law enforcement agents better follow the Constitution,” Bolotin told the Eagle.
Osorio’s motion was filed on April 8, the same day Ruhani told the court that he plans to switch his plea on charges of wire fraud, theft, money laundering, obstruction of justice and concealment of evidence from not guilty to guilty.
Zeno pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud in the case in February after initially pleading not guilty.
Zeno and Ruhani, who were married in a religious ceremony not recognized by the state, are accused of using a Queens Defenders credit card and credit card points to make a number of personal purchases, including to pay for a honeymoon vacation in Bali. The pair also allegedly invoiced the organization every month for their $6,000 luxury apartment in Astoria, which they falsely claimed was being used to help the organization’s clients.
The allegations nearly decimated Queens Defenders, which mostly runs on taxpayer-funded city contracts. After Zeno and Ruhani were arrested, the city ended a more than $30 million criminal defense contract it had with the organization, forcing the organization to shutter its criminal defense practice.
Osorio, who is not accused of participating in the scheme to steal money from the legal services nonprofit, was charged with making false statements to federal law enforcement and obstruction of justice in October 2025, four months after Zeno and Ruhani were first charged.
It’s unclear how Osorio and Ruhani knew each other.
Osorio, a Bronx native, was the first woman to serve as editor-in-chief of “The Source,” a prominent hip-hop magazine. She later went on to serve as the editor-at-large of BET.com.
In recent years, she’s appeared as a pundit, opining and reporting on hip-hop culture. At the time of her arrest, she was reportedly preparing to release a book on high-profile criminal trials and civil cases involving hip-hop figures.
Kimberly Osorio, a hip-hop media personality, said FBI agents illegally interrogated her in June 2025 ahead of the arrest of Rashad Ruhani and Lori Zeno. Screenshot via Kimberly Osorio/YouTube
Federal prosecutors claim Osorio was traveling with Ruhani from Los Angeles to New York the day Ruhani was arrested.
According to the charges, Ruhani learned that FBI agents were executing search warrants in the case while he and Osorio were in the air. Prosecutors allege that before the pair touched down at JFK, Ruhani gave Osorio his phone to hide. Ruhani had two phone chargers but no phone on him when he was arrested by officers in the airport.
Osorio, who exited the plane after Ruhani, was confronted by agents as she was trying to leave the airport.
“I have reason to believe that you've been traveling with somebody else from the plane that you just came off of from LAX, right?” an agent said to Osorio, according to a transcript of a video recording of the interaction Osorio took. “I want to warn you, lying to a federal agent is a crime.”
“I want to warn you that I'm not having any conversation without an attorney present,” Osorio responded. “So that's what I'm warning you.”
As the conversation progressed, the pair of agents told Osorio that they believed she was holding Ruhani’s phone, an allegation she denied.
“I do not have any devices on my person that do not belong to me,” she said.
It was the only time in the recorded part of the conversation that Osorio directly responded to the agents’ questions. She mostly said that she wouldn’t answer their questions without her attorney present.
“Right then and there, the questioning has to stop,” Bolotin said.
Osorio allegedly had a similar conversation with agents the next day, when she went to Ruhani’s arraignment hearing.
Bolotin said in his motion that “law enforcement officers detained and interrogated her at the courthouse” despite the fact that Osorio had “invoked her right to an attorney five times mere hours before.”
The attorney also alleged that a subsequent search of Osorio’s home, where prosecutors said a note suggesting Osorio planned to claim the phone was given to her as a gift, should also be found to be illegal.
“This court should suppress all statements obtained from Ms. Osorio because they occurred during seizures unsupported by probable cause, without Miranda warnings, and after Ms. Osorio invoked her right to an attorney,” the motion reads.
“This court should also suppress any and all evidence obtained pursuant to the search warrants because those warrants’ affidavits probable cause sections relied upon these illegally obtained statements,” the motion continued.
Federal prosecutors have until April 23 to reply to the motion.
