Jen Shah Changes Plea To Guilty, ‘RHOSLC’ Star Admits To Running Telemarketing Scheme!
Jen Shah Changes Plea To Guilty, ‘RHOSLC’ Star Admits To Running Telemarketing Scheme!
Jen Shah has just changed her plea to guilty in Manhattan federal court this morning. This means the embattled Real Housewives of Salt Lake City star is facing prison time, along with major fines.
Jen Shah, 48, was arrested in March 2021 in Salt Lake City on the indictment out of Manhattan federal court. She was set to go to trial next week before the last-minute guilty plea to a charge of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
Federal prosecutors allege that Jen Shah ran a telemarketing scheme that defrauded hundreds of victims for years.
Jen Shah is facing up to 14 years in prison under a deal with prosecutors, as well as millions of dollars in fines and restitution.
“Jennifer Shah, who portrays herself as a wealthy and successful businessperson on ‘reality’ television … allegedly generated and sold ‘lead lists’ of innocent individuals for other members of their scheme to repeatedly scam,” then-Manhattan U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss said in a statement.
The NYPD stated that Shah had “hundreds” of victims. According to the indictment, the scam ran for at least nine years, from 2012 until her arrest in 2021.
Prosecutors claim that Shah instead ran a complicated scheme to generate lists of potential victims, many over age 55, and sell those leads to telemarketing companies that would in turn try to sell business services to the victims.
Shah would then purportedly receive a share of the allegedly fraudulent revenue those telemarketers generated.
During a Real Housewives of Salt Lake City reunion aired last year, Shah tried to explain what exactly she did for a living, after some of her friends said they didn’t even understand it themselves.
“My background is in direct response marketing for about 20 years, so our company does advertising. We have a platform that helps people acquire customers, so when you’re shopping online or on the Internet, and something pops, we have the algorithm behind why you’re getting served that ad,” Shah said, according to a Bravo recap of the show.
Shah’s righthand man in the scam, Stuart Smith, Shah’s 43-year-old “first assistant,” copped to hiding money and lying under oath in the pair’s ongoing criminal case about their alleged involvement in a massive telemarketing scheme. He changed his plea to guilty in November 2021.
He pleaded guilty to three counts: conspiracy to commit wire fraud, money laundering and obstruction of justice.” “He admitted to hiding ownership and money, defrauding elderly people and lying to the Federal Trade Commission in a deposition, which constituted perjury.”
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