{"id":23950,"date":"2026-03-16T07:22:27","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T07:22:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/?p=23950"},"modified":"2026-03-16T07:22:32","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T07:22:32","slug":"new-orleans-lawyer-accused-of-stealing-from-client-indicted-courts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/?p=23950","title":{"rendered":"New Orleans lawyer accused of stealing from client indicted | Courts"},"content":{"rendered":"


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A federal grand jury charged a New Orleans criminal defense lawyer on Friday with wire fraud<\/a>, accusing her of stealing $250,000 from a client\u2019s family for a bogus settlement she claimed to have confected<\/span> with the Orleans Parish District Attorney\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n

Over a seven-month period last year, attorney Tanzanika Ruffin solicited the staggering sum from the family of client Kai Hansen through wire transfers and Venmo payments, a grand jury indictment alleges. She wrote official-sounding emails claiming portions of the money would resolve Hansen\u2019s charges, according to the indictment and state court records. She said payments would also cover medical treatment for a New Orleans Police Department officer whom Hansen was accused of assaulting in March outside of a Bourbon Street cigar bar.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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But \u201cas Ruffin well knew, neither the (District Attorney\u2019s Office) nor the officer requested any money from the client at any point,\u201d the indictment reads.<\/p>\n

Ruffin on Friday referred a request for comment to her attorney, Kerry Cuccia. Cuccia declined to comment, saying he had not yet reviewed the indictment. Cuccia has previously said his client repaid the family<\/a>, save for some attorney\u2019s fees.<\/p>\n

The allegations surrounding Ruffin,\u00a0who runs a firm specializing in criminal defense and announced a run for an Orleans Parish judgeship<\/a> last November, have roiled the city\u2019s legal circles for months.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The bizarre alleged scheme surfaced late last year in a filing by District Attorney Jason Williams\u2019 office. Accusing her of \u201cfraud and deception,\u201d state prosecutors detailed how they believed Ruffin had bilked Hansen, who the DA\u2019s office was prosecuting, out of tens of thousands of dollars for the fake \u201csettlement\u201d and other bogus fees stemming from his 2025 arrest.<\/p>\n

Hefty fees<\/h3>\n

Hansen was let out of jail on an $8,000 bond; yet Ruffin billed the family $66,000 for what she described as bond-related costs, according to the DA\u2019s office\u2019s December filing.<\/p>\n

Later, she said Hansen could pay a \u201csettlement\u201d for a lighter sentence, tying sums to each charge he faced: $25,000 for each of two counts of resisting a police officer by force; $5,000 for simple assault on a police officer and so on, emails included in state court filings show. One charge Ruffin listed, \u201c2nd degree aggravated battery on a police officer,\u201d does not exist under Louisiana law. For that count, she billed the family $15,000, the records show.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The DA\u2019s office learned of the fake settlement after the family hired a separate attorney to review what they thought might be irregularities in the agreement Ruffin claimed she had negotiated. That attorney contacted the DA\u2019s office, records show. When they learned what Ruffin had told the family, police and state prosecutors started investigating.<\/p>\n

The family provided records to the DA\u2019s office showing $250,000 in wire transfers and Venmo payments they sent Ruffin.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for Williams\u2019 office did not immediately respond late Friday to a request for comment on the indictment.<\/p>\n

Federal investigators were revealed to be scrutinizing the case in January of this year<\/span>. Hansen gave documents and recordings of the family\u2019s interactions with Ruffin to FBI agents, according to a January court filing by a new attorney the family hired, Graham Bosworth.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The criminal court judge overseeing Hansen\u2019s case, Robin Pittman, recused herself in what legal analysts described to WVUE-TV<\/a> as a sign she may have been called as a witness in the federal probe. The TV station first reported the allegations against Ruffin last year.<\/p>\n

Ruffin returned money, attorney said<\/h3>\n

Cuccia told WVUE on Jan. 16 that Ruffin had “almost immediately returned the money that she clearly was not entitled to keep.\u201d Ruffin kept attorney\u2019s fees of just over $33,000, Cuccia told the station. Ruffin\u2019s federal indictment orders her to surrender to the government any property purchased with the money.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Since they surfaced, the allegations have already had repercussions for Ruffin. She represented one of the 10 New Orleans jail escapees who broke out last May, who have all since returned to jail. In December, the escapee was assigned a new attorney as the DA\u2019s office detailed the allegations in state court filings.<\/p>\n

A judge in 2015 declared a mistria<\/a>l after Ruffin, who was representing second-degree murder defendant Leroy Price, disclosed that she also represented a business owned by someone married to a police detective who led the murder investigation. Price had said the connection made him uncomfortable with his representation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Prosecutors, though, pushed to salvage the trial after learning that the detective\u2019s wife had dissolved her stake in the company years earlier.<\/p>\n

In 2011, when she was a prosecutor for the District Attorney\u2019s Office, Ruffin was disciplined by the Louisiana Supreme Court for threatening to prosecute a person<\/a> who wrote a bad check to a friend of hers, records show<\/a>. She lost her job with the DA\u2019s office after she \u201cself-reported\u201d the episode.<\/p>\n

Ruffin acknowledged the incident in a blurb posted to a legal website, calling it a formative part of her legal career.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cFirst, let me address the obvious,\u201d she wrote<\/a>. \u201cYes, I was disciplined early on in my practice. But, like so many, my mistakes do not define who I am and certainly does not define who I am now.\u201d<\/p>\n

U.S. Attorney David Courcelle<\/a> of the Eastern District of Louisiana, a career defense attorney sworn in as the 13-parish district\u2019s top federal prosecutor in December<\/a>, presented the indictment in magistrate court alongside Assistant U.S. Attorney Maria Carboni.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Newly appointed U.S. attorneys who are not career Justice Department prosecutors sometimes try cases personally, legal veterans say, either to gain a better grasp of how to navigate the federal system as a prosecutor or simply to show solidarity with the duties of rank-and-file prosecutors who work for them.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact that Mr. Courcelle appears to have handled and presented this indictment personally is significant,\u201d said Michael Magner, a veteran white-collar defense attorney and former federal prosecutor. Doing so, Magner added, \u201creflects his intentions to pursue worthwhile cases aggressively and help restore the office\u2019s storied reputation for prosecuting corruption and major fraud cases.\u201c<\/p>\n

Staff writer John Simerman contributed to this report.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n


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A federal grand jury charged a New Orleans criminal defense lawyer on Friday with wire fraud, accusing her of stealing $250,000 from a client\u2019s family for a bogus settlement she claimed to have confected with the Orleans Parish District Attorney\u2019s Office. Over a seven-month period last year, attorney Tanzanika Ruffin solicited the staggering sum from … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23951,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/New-Orleans-lawyer-accused-of-stealing-from-client-indicted.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23950"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23950\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23952,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23950\/revisions\/23952"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}