How 'Real Housewife' Jen Shah's fabulous life came crashing down

Jenn Shah
On Friday, the "Real Housewives of Salt Lake City" cast member Jen Shah was sentenced to 6 1/2 years in prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud in connection with a telemarketing scam targeting older victims. Chad Kirkland/Bravo; Rebecca Zisser/Insider
Read in app
Chevron icon It indicates an expandable section or menu, or sometimes previous / next navigation options. HOMEPAGE

The scene was reality-TV gold: Jen Shah, the glamorous, temperamental star of "The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City," climbed into a sprinter van headed to Vail for a ski weekend with her castmates. It was March 2021, and she was decked out in a typically over-the-top ensemble: midthigh cheetah-print boots and a fur shrug. As producers fussed and camera operators adjusted their lenses, Shah answered a phone call. Flustered, she asked a castmate to turn off her mic and climbed out of the van. There was an emergency, she said, before driving away.

Moments later, a helicopter appeared and Homeland Security agents and New York City Police Department officers swarmed the van as sirens blared. The officers were looking for Shah, they said: She was being arrested on federal fraud charges.

"You guys, what if she's on the run?" one castmate, Heather Gay, asked.

Advertisement

On Friday, Shah was sentenced to 6 ½ years in prison, after waiting until a week before trial to plead guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud in connection with a telemarketing scam targeting elderly victims. "I struggled to be responsible for the longest time because I deluded myself into believing that I had done nothing wrong," Shah, wearing a camel-colored suit and an animal-print blouse and heels, told a federal judge in Manhattan. "I'm so sorry," she said through tears.

Shah, 49, burst onto "The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City" when it premiered in November 2020. While each of the "Salt Lake" women have their shtick — Whitney Rose is the sexy ex-Mormon, Meredith Marks the jewelry designer with a troubled marriage and lockjaw accent — Shah was the outspoken one, the turbulent life of the party. Her persona was one of excess: "I make millions," she bragged in a casting tape. "I probably spend at least 50 grand a month." (She later clarified on a podcast that the $50,000 was just for clothing.) Shah showed off her five-bed, eight-bath, $7-million-plus spread in Park City, spelling out "Shah Chalet" in hot-pink petals against a bed of white flowers, at one of her lavish parties. She wore Moncler fox furs and Versace purses. She was the type of person who sported open-toe high-heeled sandals in the snow and who hired a fleet of hair and makeup stylists not only to style her for events but to do practice run-throughs the day prior.

Homeland Security agents and NYPD officers swarm a van on "Real Housewives of Salt Lake City" looking for Jen Shah.
Minutes after Shah drove away from a van destined for Vail, Colorado, in March 2021, NYPD officers and Homeland Security officers swarmed the vehicle looking for her. bravotv.com

This was a woman who surrounded herself with a gaggle of assistants, ordering them around with a rose-gold microphone. In one episode, she grilled Stuart Smith, her "1st Assistant," as a Bravo chyron described him, over every detail of an $85,000 party she was throwing for a castmate, quizzing him on the shape of the ice sculpture (a diamond), the height of the cake (3 feet), and the cake flavor (chocolate and raspberry). When Smith, who was chauffeuring a Louis Vuitton-cape-wearing Shah around in her Porsche, dared to ask about stopping for lunch, she shot him down: "There's no time to eat lunch — you have a lot of work to do."

Shah didn't just give TV viewers luxury — she gave them drama. She was known for her temper, screaming, crying, swearing, and throwing things: a tray of crudités, water at a camera, Champagne on a friend's head, a pair of someone else's $1,500 shoes off a boat.

Despite giving her all on camera, Shah was always vague about what exactly she did to make her money. During a reunion episode at the end of the first season, when the Bravo executive Andy Cohen pressed Shah for specifics about her job, Shah simply responded that she worked in "direct-response marketing — a platform that helps people acquire customers." Before her arrest, Shah told "Access Hollywood": "I'm the Wizard of Oz. I'm the one behind the curtain that nobody knows exists, but I'm the one making everything happen."

It turns out that what Shah was doing behind the curtain was illegal. For nine years, she sold customer names to telemarketing companies that hawked fake services over the phone, pretending to help vulnerable people establish and run online businesses, often for tens of thousands of dollars. During this time, she also ran her own telemarketing operation.

The scam typically went as follows, according to court documents: Shah gathered names of prospective customers, which she sold to third-party telemarketing companies (often these customers said they had responded to a YouTube ad or email about starting their own home-based business). Then someone from the telemarketing company would call them. If the customer agreed to pay to start said business — perhaps a shipment service involving eBay, or something to do with affiliate marketing — they'd be inundated with subsequent calls prompting them to purchase additional services like business coaching, marketing, or bookkeeping. The telemarketers would also ask victims about their assets and credit limits in the guise of making sure they were qualified to start a business, but really "for the purposes of determining exactly how much these elderly people could be scammed for," the judge overseeing Shah's case, Sidney H. Stein, said at her sentencing. Stein said the scam included more than 1,000 victims, almost all elderly, and took "millions" from them.

I'm the Wizard of Oz. I'm the one behind the curtain that nobody knows exists, but I'm the one making everything happen. Jen Shah

One of Shah's victims spent more than $100,000 on a website, startup costs, and educational programs. The woman wrote to the judge overseeing Shah's case that she'd had to remortgage her house, almost divorced, and "thought about ending my own life." Another victim, a special-education teacher hoping to supplement her retirement pension, spent $35,000 before realizing she'd been scammed. When she asked for refunds, she got nowhere. She wrote to the court that she'd had two heart attacks because of the stress, adding that, at 60, "I may never bounce back from my medical, emotional and financial situation caused by Jennifer and her partners."

Advertisement

Shah attempted to cover up her involvement in these schemes, court documents said. She set up operations in the Balkan state of Kosovo, kept her name off business bank accounts, and texted her assistant Stuart Smith about deleting documents and encrypting messages. And yet, while the scams were still ongoing, she decided to join the cast of "Housewives," inviting cameras into her home and opening herself up to a world of scrutiny.

She's not the first reality-TV star to tempt fate: Some of her reality-star peers have landed in legal hot water after showcasing their lives on TV. When the "Real Housewives of Beverly Hills" cast member Erika Girardi's lawyer husband was accused of cheating clients, she became the target of lawsuits thanks in part to her flashy lifestyle. The "Real Housewives of New Jersey" star Teresa Giudice served an 11-month prison sentence for fraud related to her husband's bankruptcy case. In November, the reality stars Julie and Todd Chrisley received lengthy sentences for bank fraud, tax evasion, and other charges.

But Shah wanted money so badly that she was willing to lie. And she wanted fame so badly, that she was willing to risk those lies coming to light. Once she became a star, Shah seemed desperate to maintain the illusion of a successful businesswoman. The day before her arrest, she spent $299,915 on ruby and diamond rings, necklaces, and bracelets at an upscale Park City jeweler. When federal agents searched her home the following day, they found more than 100 luxury handbags, jewelry items, and other accessories.

Authorities later discovered that more than two-thirds of the items, branded Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Cartier, Gucci, Hermès, and Bulgari, were fake.

As Shah said at her sentencing, her voice hoarse, "Reality TV has nothing to do with reality."


Shah spent her early years in Hawaii. She was raised by her grandparents while her Polynesian Mormon parents attended Brigham Young University, a college in Utah owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. When her parents brought her to Utah at age 5, "it was culture shock," Shah told the podcast host Anisha Ramakrishna. The state's population was more than 95% white in the 1980s, and Shah told federal authorities that she once rubbed her skin raw after classmates asked why it was "dirty."

To stand out, or to fit in, she developed an outsize personality. "Growing up, it was like, 'Oh my gosh, get Jen over here, the brown girl, 'cause she can dance good,'" Shah told Ramakrishna. "We would go to, like, church dances and literally they would pull me into the middle. Like, hey, maybe I don't want to do Michael Jackson, 'Thriller.' But I guess I'm going to have to do it."

The performances seemed to give her an identity. In middle school in Orem, Utah, she was student-body president — in high school, a varsity cheerleader, according to yearbooks. Her senior-year yearbook predicted that as an adult she would be "teaching Mexican immigrants English by way of rap music."

Advertisement

Though she came from a strict Mormon family, Shah chose the University of Utah, which isn't a religious school, over Brigham Young. There she met Sharrieff Shah, a star football player. He grew up in South Central Los Angeles and had a rougher upbringing than his future wife. His best friend was shot dead in front of him. Jen Shah, meanwhile, told Ramakrishna she was so sheltered that when her future husband used what she called the "F-word," she nearly broke up with him.

Shah accidentally got pregnant in college, and though she and Sharrieff Shah decided to have the baby, her parents disapproved and her father disowned her. "My wife's parents did not like me because I played football, and I was not Polynesian or Mormon, but rather an African American Muslim from the dirty streets of Los Angeles," Sharrieff Shah later wrote in a letter to the court. They married, and her family ultimately came to accept the marriage.

In college, Sharrieff Shah's promising football career ended after a gametime injury: a herniated disk that put him at risk for paralysis. The couple decided that he should get his degree while Jen Shah dropped out of college to work. While Sharrieff Shah went on to law school, he wrote, his wife worked three jobs: as a secretary, as a nanny, and on the weekends as a model. After spending years as a civil litigator, Sharrieff Shah joined his college football team, the Utah Utes, as an assistant coach in 2012. He makes $632,000 a year, according to Utah public records, which, if Jen Shah's claims are true, would barely cover her annual clothing budget. The couple have two children: a 28-year-old son, who's in medical school, and a 17-year-old son.

For a while, Jen Shah bounced from job to job. She worked at a finance company called United Auto, then in marketing at FranklinCovey, a leadership-development company, before getting into the direct-marketing business in 2009. At first, she was selling legitimate things, like coaching and seminars, her lawyer, Priya Chaudhry, said at her sentencing.

Along the way, she said, she learned how tough it was to be a woman of color working in Utah, particularly because in the dominant Mormon religion, women generally weren't professionals (Shah converted to Islam after marriage). "In Utah, I wasn't supposed to be working. I was supposed to be at home," she said in an interview this summer.

We went from having unstable Jen once every two months to having unstable Jen every day. The show made everything a hundred times worse. A friend of Jen Shah's

By 2017, after working at small marketing firms, Shah had set up her own direct-marketing companies, including one called Red Steele and another named Mastery Pro Group, which was based in New York. She began spending more time in the city; her husband, meanwhile, was rarely home because of his coaching job. In a letter to the court, Sharrieff Shah's mother wrote that Jen Shah threw herself into work as "she and my son grew even more distant." Jen Shah became "short-tempered and easily agitated," Sharrieff Shah's mother added. "Her judgment was often clouded."

Jen Shah got a New York apartment — evidence prepared for her trial suggests it was at the Mercedes House, a luxury Hell's Kitchen building — and was a familiar face at the Gucci store on Fifth Avenue. In the summer of 2018, she shopped at Gucci seven times, racking up more than $70,000 in sales, according to receipts investigators later found.

When Bravo producers began looking for Salt Lake City businesswomen for "Housewives," they reached out to Shah. She pitched herself as a woman of color who'd made her own fortune. "Here in Utah, the ladies are like, 'How does the brown girl and the Black husband have all this money?'" she told "Access Hollywood" in 2020.

Advertisement

Scott D. Pierce, a TV critic for The Salt Lake Tribune, was surprised to find Shah on a list of rumored cast members; she had been his neighbor in middle-class West Jordan, Utah, years earlier. While he remembers Shah dressing in "very nice business attire," he said, "I don't remember, you know, crazy fingernails and high fashion and all that kind of stuff."

At Shah's sentencing, Chaudhry said her client spent years "trying to fake it until she made it." She redoubled her efforts for the cameras, said a person who has been close with Shah. For instance, before the show, Stuart Smith, her "first assistant," was always around, but not the bevy of assistants or the hair and makeup teams. "We went from having unstable Jen once every two months to having unstable Jen every day, for every weekend," with "Kardashian-level" dramatics, the friend said. "The show made everything a hundred times worse."

Real Housewives of Salt Lake City cast members Heather Gay, Meredith Marks, Whitney Rose, Lisa Barlow, and Jen Shah.
Shah became known as much for her temper as her style, often shouting at her castmates, pictured here, and throwing things on camera. Fred Hayes/Bravo/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images.

Koa Johnson, a fashion designer, met Shah in spring 2020, a couple of months into filming, and designed several gowns for her to wear on the show. "She wanted big, she wanted gaudy, she wanted very, very extreme pieces, not a lot of things you could find off a rack. She wanted to be memorable," Johnson said. The first time he arrived at Shah's "chalet," he found the Bravo star surrounded by members of her extended family, several of whom lived with her and helped out around the house. Johnson, who is also Polynesian, said he and Shah connected instantly, and he found her to be friendly and warm.

Shah saw "Housewives" as a branding opportunity, Johnson said. She enlisted him to work not only on custom dress designs, but also on merchandise with catchphrases she used on the show ("Shah-mazing" and "Shahbulous" are two of her oft-repeated lines).

While they got along well at first, Johnson noticed that Shah angered quickly and went through people fast. She fired so many assistants that Johnson was pulled in to work as an assistant on top of designing for Shah. Johnson said it was like "babysitting a 48-year-old." The assistants bought Shah fake nails, put gas in her car, and made — then canceled and rescheduled — her hair and makeup appointments, which she often missed, he said. It was "really ridiculous things that she couldn't do for herself because she had absolutely no sense of time and urgency," Johnson added, noting that her husband and kids were rarely around. "She wouldn't get out of bed — it was very difficult for her to get out of her house." (Shah told a judge at her 2022 plea hearing that she had been treated for "alcohol and depression" two years prior. In the current season of "Housewives," which is about midway through, Shah said she took antidepressants.)

She wanted big, she wanted gaudy, she wanted very, very extreme pieces. She wanted to be memorable. Koa Johnson, Jen Shah's former fashion designer

When Sharrieff Shah did participate in filming, he quickly became a fan favorite, calm and sensible. He invited the "Housewives" husbands over for talks about their feelings and dealt with his wife's emotions with a coach's sensibility. "You control you," he told Shah when she called him about how to handle her temper at a luncheon.

It was unclear how much Sharrieff Shah knew about his wife's life, on-screen and off. "I don't need Coach Shah stepping up in here asking me questions, asking me how much shit cost," Shah said during one episode as her assistants cleaned away the evidence of an expensive party she'd thrown while he was traveling. Though Jen Shah told a castmate they were close to divorce before her arrest, Sharrieff Shah supported and defended her during the case, and he wrote the court that he wished he'd asked her more questions about her marketing work.

Once the show aired and Jen Shah developed a fan base, her behavior became more dramatic, Johnson said. "The more and more attention and traction she got, the more and more she desired that type of attention, and image played such a huge role in her life," he said. She eventually turned on Johnson after a spat over a reunion dress, to the point that he quit. When their disagreement became public, he said, Shah's social-media followers attacked him, sending direct messages with personal details that he believed only Shah knew.

Advertisement

Shah seemed to relish her online minions. She befriended one "superfan" via Instagram, FaceTiming him regularly. She contacted another man running a "Housewives" Instagram account, calling him "from her personal phone number" to chat. She flew another Instagram acquaintance and his best friend to Salt Lake, put them up in a "fabulous hotel downtown," and when he lost his earrings, bought him another pair "worth way more," according to letters each fan submitted to the court in support of Shah for her sentencing.

Shah was known for her generosity. As the oldest of six children, she would cover bills or banquets for extended family members, and she would pay for a girls' night at a strip club. Yet Shah's circle of real-life acquaintances — mostly new friends, as she'd spent so little time in Salt Lake City before the show — was baffled by her finances. There were rumors that she rented, rather than owned, the Park City "Shah chalet" shown on "Housewives" (a rumor that turned out to be true, per federal prosecutors).

While the other castmates invited cameras to film at their offices, or participated in storylines about their careers, Shah mostly avoided discussing her "direct marketing" work. She claimed she was starting fashion and beauty businesses, but those seemed to go nowhere. In 2020, she launched a "high fashion" line called JXA; it's unclear what clothing it sold other than masks, though its Instagram page features Shah modeling Johnson's evening-gown designs. JXA's last post was in January 2021, and its website is no longer functional. Her makeup brand, Shah Beauty, sells no products on its website, while Shah Lashes' Instagram has a "Coming Soon" banner and says "Official Launch in 2021."

"I was confused at how she would show up with these brand items. She'd be like, 'Well, I just came back from New York,' and it looks like she has $200,000 worth of product," a former friend said. "The way Jen spent money, to me that's not normal."


The one part of Shah's work life that was consistent was Stuart Smith. On the show, she described Smith as her "personal and business assistant." "He just does everything," she said. "He knows my favorite color, my favorite food, he'll go get me tampons." Smith made his first appearance in the show's inaugural episode. Balding and middle-aged, he drove Shah's Porsche (also leased, prosecutors later noted) to a Botox appointment. While she swanned in, dressed in a fur stole tossed over a sheer camouflage coat, he shuffled after her in loose jeans clutching a plastic bag containing beef jerky and what appeared to be soda cans.

When Shah needed to make a purchase, she did so through Smith. "He had to be with her because he had to pay for things as small as gasoline," a friend said. When Shah owed someone money, it was Smith who would pay them through Zelle or Venmo, the friend said.

Smith became a regular presence on "Housewives," swiffering Shah's house or kneeling in the snow to fasten snowshoes onto her feet. "I envy what you have — you're with your kids every day — and I sacrificed that for work, to set up all these businesses, and companies," Shah told him as they snowshoed.

"I've seen that, and I know that you'll always be there, and I'll always be here for you," Smith replied.

Advertisement

When law enforcement surrounded the sprinter van that day, alarmed castmates immediately said to call "Stu." Except Smith was also arrested, questioned, and charged with federal fraud that same day. Smith's attorney didn't respond to requests for comment.

It turns out Smith wasn't just driving Shah around; he was her marketing business partner. He helped set up the various entities; he helped run them; and a bevy of texts that prosecutors submitted to court show him strategizing with Shah on how to cover up their roles in the businesses to stay off the government's radar.

Real Housewives of Salt Lake City cast members Jen Shah, Heather Grey, and Whitney Rose.
Prosecutors wrote that Shah, left, took "extraordinary steps to conceal her conduct," setting up operations in the Balkans and keeping her name off of business accounts. Nicole Weinagart/Bravo/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images.

The morning Shah was arrested, she received a call from Christopher Bastos, an NYPD detective investigating her case (the NYPD was working with the federal government on several telemarketing cases with New York roots). "Det. Bastos did not tell me why he was calling, but instead told me to pull over, and minutes later, he pulled up in a car with other agents. I was walked to the back of the car, placed in handcuffs, and told that they had a warrant for my arrest," Shah wrote in a statement she submitted to court, adding that she "thought I might have been the victim of a false identification."

She was driven to a federal building and brought to a break room, where she was handcuffed to a chair. She signed a document waiving her Miranda rights, meaning she could be questioned without a lawyer present, which almost no criminal lawyer would advise. She later said her contacts were dry and her vision blurry so she couldn't read the document in front of her. "She is unsophisticated, your Honor," her lawyer later said.

Bastos and a federal agent questioned Shah for 90 minutes. At one point, Bastos asked her about "BizOp," shorthand for the type of telemarketing Shah specialized in, and whether she knew anyone in the industry who'd been arrested.

Shah equivocated, saying she heard some people had been arrested but "didn't know them" — a statement future evidence contradicted. At that point, for example, one man she'd been texting with directly, and who'd been working with her, had been arrested.

Once Stuart cooperated, she had no way of winning this case. Los Angeles-based lawyer Ronald Richards

Shah's defense seemed to be two-pronged. One strategy was to blame the problems on Smith (in court papers, her lawyers said Smith was on a "crime spree"). The other was to say that other telemarketers may have acted illegally but Shah wasn't aware of it.

Had Shah been arrested alone, she might've had a stronger argument. But a cooperating witness had secretly recorded Smith discussing the telemarketing schemes. In November, about eight months into the case, Smith pleaded guilty and agreed to testify against Shah at her trial.

Advertisement

Smith's flip changed everything, said Ronald Richards, a lawyer in Los Angeles who has followed the case closely.

"Once Stuart cooperated," Richards said, "she had no way of winning this case."


The scheme that supported Shah's glamorous lifestyle was neither original nor particularly sophisticated. The Federal Trade Commission has targeted dozens of similar "coaching" or "business opportunity" companies, where telemarketers persuade victims to start an online business and then sell them related services — tax help, accounting services, business-credit applications — without providing anything of value.

Shah's specialty was in identifying prospective customers, called "leads" in telemarketing lingo, to pass on to the sales representatives.

Around 2011, Shah and Smith were working at a marketing company called Thrive Learning, which sold so-called business coaching services. She and Smith worked as vice presidents — something of a misnomer, her lawyers argued, writing that Shah was "at best middle management." Smith told regulators that, prior to Thrive, his background entailed pushing carts at Costco and working at its bakery, then running a landscape nursery. In 2017, Thrive, without admitting or denying the allegations, agreed to pay a $27 million settlement to the FTC after an investigation into its business practices. The FTC alleged that Thrive ran a coaching scam, selling a "curriculum" from "experienced instructors."

Jen Shah
At first, Shah insisted she was innocent. "If I have any fault, it is because I am too giving, and I help too many people," she told cameras on the most recent season of "Housewives." Heidi Gutman/Bravo/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images

By the time the FTC sanctioned Thrive, Shah and Smith had already paired up to launch their own companies. Shah established one business working as a "lead broker" — the person identifying and compiling targets — for partner companies. The lead broker generally gets a 40% cut of whatever services are sold to the target, according to testimony in a related case.

With Smith's help, Shah also set up a firm in New York called Mastery Pro Group. Here, she oversaw "salespeople at MPG who spent all day every day lying to the Victims," federal prosecutors wrote. While Shah's lawyers pointed out that she had no direct contact with victims, the prosecutor Robert B. Sobelman argued she was heavily involved in the day-to-day, including instructing sales representatives on how to communicate with victims. "Every cooperating witness we spoke to said the person who has the most power in this scheme is Jen Shah," Sobelman said at her sentencing. "She was one of the people who led the way from what might've been a gray area to what was clear and brazen fraud."

Statements from Shah's case show just how vulnerable these victims were. A California woman in her 70s, who'd recently been widowed, was trying to support herself when she responded to an email offering to help her start an internet-based business, no computer skills required. "In a week, I was swamped with many phone calls," she wrote to the court. One of Shah's MPG sales representatives got the California woman to agree to pay $9,995 for "ecommerce consulting."

Advertisement

The sales rep was in direct contact with Shah while he hounded the woman, according to text messages filed as part of court documents.

"Hey guys she agreed to 9995," the salesman texted Shah, Smith, and another colleague. "She's laughing and excited and I think she's in love with me. Lol"

Shah responded: "If she's in love with you then you better make sure she loves you for at least 16 weeks so she doesn't" dispute the charge with her credit-card company. "Close this lady. Solid. Send a selfie, whatever you need to do so she stays in love with you. Lol"

"She closed," the sales representative told Shah. "She sent me nude photos already and she's calling me daddy. Lolol"

"Oh wow. Nice job," Shah responded.

Meanwhile, the victim told the court she was terrified she would "be left in poverty and my family would disown me for doing such stupid things, like throwing away my own savings."

For Shah, the focus was on the bottom line. Once, when a customer requested a refund, Shah asked a group of colleagues whether the customer was "done crying and ready to move forward?"

She once texted six people that she was coming into the MPG office to set up sales appointments for her telemarketers: "Please get my 24 karat gold headset with diamond encrusted mouthpiece ready. Papi needs money for the weekend."

Advertisement

Shah continued to rope in unsuspecting victims at her other business venture, Red Steele, where she worked as an independent lead broker. In June 2018, Shah emailed a document titled "Upsell Spreadsheet" to another telemarketer. The document included a client's name and columns like "Initial Amount Collected" (in this case, $6,500) and "Products" ("12 Weeks coaching, ebay training/dropshipping, and webbuilder").

This particular client told an NYPD investigator she had been roped in after she'd responded to a YouTube ad for a home-based business. After responding, she said, she received a phone call, which she assumed was from the company, where a telemarketer sold her a package including website creation and lessons on building "an online business using Amazon and eBay."

From there, "she received telephone calls twice per week for several weeks from 'coaches,' who purported to teach her about her online business," along with additional callers pitching more services, the investigator wrote in an application for a search warrant for Shah's email account. The client "never made any money."


In theory, Shah was well aware of the legal risk she was taking. In 2015, the FTC deposed her in a case against a telemarketing company she'd worked with. That company settled for $16 million, and the people running it agreed to a permanent ban from selling coaching, work-at-home, or business-setup services.

In 2017, the same year Shah's former employer Thrive settled its own FTC inquiry, federal prosecutors brought a case against a wide ring of telemarketers — some of whom Shah had worked with closely — and charged them with wire fraud and money laundering. Ultimately, 15 people were charged, and many received prison sentences.

Text messages show the case unnerved Shah. "HOLY FUCKING SHIT!!!!!!!!" she replied to a text about the arrests, and evidence showed her running searches on the cases, texting Smith about the investigating agencies, and reading the related court documents.

While many of Shah's former colleagues were brazen — if a company they worked for came under FTC scrutiny, they simply shut it down and started a new one — Shah did her best to avoid the same fate, taking what prosecutors wrote were "extraordinary steps to conceal her conduct from the FTC."

She established her business in the Balkan state of Kosovo, explaining to Smith in 2017 texts that this would "minimize the risk" so that "we can run this for a long time." She had Smith incorporate Mastery Pro Group in Wyoming without linking her name to the company, "to hide actual ownership of the corporation," Smith told a judge, adding, "we did not want anyone to know we were involved." She had her aunt open a bank account in the aunt's name that Shah used for her business.

Advertisement
Panorama photo of the Salt Lake City Utah skyline showing downtown buildings and the snow-covered Wasatch Mountains in the background.
Shah learned the marketing business in Utah, which the local paper The Deseret News wrote in 2019 had a "long-held reputation as the fraud capital of the United States." Universal Images Group via Getty Images.

When the FTC deposed Smith in 2018 over yet another scam he was linked to, Shah texted him answers to the FTC's questions, instructed him not to reveal she was involved in the lead-brokering company they had started, and texted, as he was being questioned, "I'm sitting here across the street in case I need to come rescue you."

She told Smith to delete certain emails, discussed removing a computer from the MPG office and sales documents from a Google drive, and suggested that her workers switch to the encrypted app Telegram for messaging. Rather than having Mastery pay her directly, she had Smith, the only signer on the company bank account, pay for expenses like her New York apartment. She arranged for cash withdrawals from the Mastery account that matched cash deposits into her personal bank account. She avoided declaring much of her telemarketing income on her tax returns. Shah, Chaudhry said at her sentencing, believed "that she was becoming glamorous and important, and that nobody was hurt."

Shah appeared to be right at home among like-minded peers in Utah. In 2019 The Deseret News, a respected local paper, remarked on the state's "long-held reputation as the fraud capital of the United States." The FTC has sanctioned a long list of coaching and work-from-home companies out of Utah, including those to which Shah was linked. Mark Pugsley, a lawyer in Salt Lake City who has worked on and blogged about Utah fraud cases, said the state had seen everything from Ponzi schemes, where Utah is said to be the per capita leader, to business-coaching companies like Shah's, to legal-but-iffy multilevel-marketing setups, where neighbors sell one another lotions or jewelry but usually make little profit.

Part of this stems from Utah's aggressive sales culture, led by young people back from their Mormon missions. "They've learned to sell, and they're selling religion, so they have thick skins," Pugsley said. "The word 'convert' is also a sales word. They're not just converting leads — they're converting people." Add a trusting populace, and Utah is rich territory for unscrupulous businesspeople.

"Coaching" or "business setup" schemes like the ones Shah started running don't require much originality. Their operators don't tend to be master criminals but simply folks who figure they can make an easy buck, said Pugsley, who has represented people involved with coaching companies that drew government scrutiny. "I don't know if I can give you a real reason other than so-and-so saw what this other person was doing, and they were making all this money," he said. "They all kind of think that they're different, you know: 'Oh, well, we're doing it ethically.' It's really taking advantage of people, and I would love to see it stop."


At first, Shah insisted she'd done nothing wrong and said she'd take her case to trial — a risky move. Just a few weeks before the trial's start date, she sat for an interview with a YouTube personality. "It's easy for people to accuse a person of color, a female person of color here in America today," she said. But, she added, "I'm innocent."

Shah discussed her case openly on "Housewives," letting cameras record a meeting between her and her lawyer where she suggested adding Kim Kardashian to her legal team; in a Bravo aftershow, she emphasized she was "dead-ass, 100, serious" about the proposal. With tears in her eyes, she told cameras during a confessional: "What I have been accused of is absolutely the complete opposite of anything I would ever do in my life. If I have any fault, it is because I am too giving, and I help too many people." She broadcast her innocence on Instagram and commissioned T-shirts reading "Not Guilty / #FreeJenShah." While a few commenters challenged the idea — "Raising money to help pay back all the victims?" one wrote — most fawned over the merchandise and Shah: "Shahmazing," "ICONIC," "I'm Here For You My Queen."

It's easy for people to accuse a person of color, a female person of color here in America today. Jen Shah

Ronald Richards, the lawyer in Los Angeles, said Shah's behavior was a mistake. The Southern District of New York, where she was to be tried, is considered the most prestigious district in the country and values decorum. "Federal prosecutors in New York are conservative," Richards said. "You're sending a message: You don't take it seriously."

Advertisement

Then, just a week before her trial was scheduled to start, Shah walked into court and pleaded guilty to a count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in connection with telemarketing. "I knew this was wrong, I know many people were harmed, and I am so sorry," she told the judge. Prosecutors wrote that she pleaded guilty only after receiving evidence like text messages and witness statements, which the prosecution shared with the defense close to trial.

In a statement she submitted to the judge before sentencing, Shah wrote that, while in New York, she'd been "making horrible professional decisions and establishing business relationships with people who were untrustworthy." She wrote that she was optimistic when Bravo came calling; in addition to forcing her back to Utah, where she could work on her marriage, it also offered a break from her marketing businesses. "The coaching business was a mess, and I wanted out," she wrote.

But prosecutors pointed out that Shah continued to run Mastery Pro Group after "Housewives" started. Her claim that she moved on from the telemarketing industry prior to her arrest, they wrote, "is completely false."

Shah's 11th-hour plea left her with scant leverage. She agreed to tough terms: $6.5 million in forfeiture and $9.5 million in restitution to victims. (Smith is also responsible for some of that, but, as Shah's lawyer wrote in a sentencing submission, "As the government and Smith well know, Smith has a storied history of failed businesses, enormous personal debt, and very limited earning potential.") At Friday's sentencing, Shah told the judge that she would "repay every cent" to victims. She promised to turn over her earnings from coming "Housewives" episodes for restitution, as well as profits from the "Free Jen Shah" merchandise. Yet it's unclear how she'll make money once she leaves prison; in the past year, she told Stein, the judge, it had been "difficult to find employment beyond my television career."

Johnson, Shah's onetime designer and assistant, wasn't surprised by the charges. "She lived with that stolen money for such a long time" and got such praise for her excessive lifestyle on Bravo that she became greedy for more, he said.

Shah's starring role on the show appears to be at an end. She skipped the reunion filmed in December, and Bravo has indicated it will no longer have her on the show. This, fall the Bravo executive Cohen told fans that once season three was done and Shah had pleaded guilty, "I think that was kind of, unfortunately, the end of the engagement." In a scene from the current season, Shah said she'd attempted suicide.

Shah gave no visible reaction as Stein imposed her sentence; she had already agreed, in her plea deal, not to appeal the sentence if it was 14 years or less.

Shah gave a statement, as is standard at federal sentencings. Her voice was hoarse as she apologized to the victims, then to her husband and their two sons, who sat in the front row of the court gallery. "I am not the same person I was before this," she said.

Advertisement

Stein seemed to agree. "She said she was Shah-mazing," he said during the hearing. "That's over — that's in the past." Shah must report for her prison sentence on February 17.

When the hearing ended, Sharrieff Shah walked to his wife. They kissed and hugged, then Shah kissed and hugged her sons. She gathered her things — a pen, turquoise folder, a glasses case, crumpled tissues, her animal-print clutch — and walked out of the courtroom. Outside, cameras were waiting.

Reality TV
Advertisement

Jump to

  1. Main content
  2. Search
  3. Account