UPDATE (04.01.2021): Jen Shah pleaded not guilty on Friday (Apr. 02) to the charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering, per Page Six. Jen dialed in from Utah for her Manhattan federal court arraignment. The RHOSLC star did not appear publicly on video. She remains free on a $1 million bond. Her alleged right-hand man, co-defendant Stuart Smith, also pled not guilty.
“The defendants both Stuart Smith and Jennifer Shah are really at the highest level of the scheme as it’s charged. The government’s view is that Shah and Smith together controlled no less than $5 million in crime proceeds that passed through just that one entity account. And there are other accounts in the name of other shell companies,” said Assistant US Attorney Kiersten Fletcher, per Page Six.
Orginal: Real Housewives of Salt Lake City star Jennifer Shah, 47, was arrested on March 30, and she’s now facing up to 30 years in prison, HollywoodLife can confirm. The reality TV star has been charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering in connection with an alleged telemarketing scam, federal prosecutors said on Tuesday morning.
“Jennifer Shah, who portrays herself as a wealthy and successful businessperson on ‘reality’ television, and Stuart Smith, who is portrayed as Shah’s ‘first assistant,’ allegedly generated and sold ‘lead lists’ of innocent individuals for other members of their scheme to repeatedly scam. In actual reality and as alleged, the so-called business opportunities pushed on the victims by Shah, Smith, and their co-conspirators were just fraudulent schemes, motivated by greed, to steal victims’ money,” Manhattan U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss said in a statement.
The NYPD claim that Jen and Stuart, 43, have “hundreds” of victims, and according to the indictment against them, their alleged scam started in 2012 — so, according to them, it’s been going on for nine years and just recently stopped last month. While Jen’s Bravo bio states she’s the “queen of her house and her businesses as the CEO of three marketing companies”, prosecutors are claiming that she and Stuart Smith ran a scheme to generate lists of potential victims. They’d then sell those names to telemarketing companies that would then try to sell business services to those people. Jen and Stuart would allegedly receive a share of the allegedly fraudulent revenue those telemarketers generated.
HollywoodLife reached out to Bravo for a comment, but we did not receive an immediate response. Jen became a reality TV star when RHOSLC premiered on Nov. 11, 2020. Season 2 is currently in production, however, it’s not yet clear if cameras were rolling when Jen was arrested.