RHOSLC fraudster Jen Shah denies scamming elderly despite jail term in self-pity interview: 'that's not true'

Jen Shah, formerly of the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, fiercely denied making a target out of the elderly in her first post-jail interview.

The 52-year-old served a total of 33 months behind bars for her role in a long-running nationwide telemarketing fraud scheme.

Shah pled guilty to wire fraud charges tied to the multimillion-dollar con, which duped thousands of victims, many of them seniors. In addition to her prison time she was ordered to pay more than $6.5 million in restitution.

Among the victim statements were one by an older woman who became homeless after losing $30,000 to Shah's scam, as well as by a woman in her 70s who lost a $40,000 sum that constituted half her life savings.

Shah was originally given 78 months in 2023, but her sentence was repeatedly slashed for good behavior and she was let out this past December to serve the rest of her time at home.

Now, in her new self-pitying interview, Shah said: 'I would like to clear up this false narrative that I targeted the elderly. I never, ever targeted the elderly,' via People.

'In the indictment, the government stated that if there are 10 customers over the age of 55, then it becomes elderly enhancement, which would add more time to my sentence. So that became the soundbite. "Jen Shah targeted the elderly. She stole from the elderly." And that's not true,' she went on.

Her argument was that although many victims of the fraud scheme were senior citizens, she did not deliberately set her sights on people of a certain age. 

Shah's arrest in March 2021 was famously captured on Bravo cameras during season two of The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City.

She initially proclaimed her innocence, even doubling down during reunion specials, but ultimately changed her plea to guilty in July 2022—months after her former assistant and co-conspirator, Stuart Smith, admitted his role. 

Prosecutors said Shah participated in the compilation of 'lead lists' of victims of the scam, in which the financially vulnerable were sold bogus 'business services.'

She stood accused of helping set the prices victims were charged, and of deciding which supposed services would be sold to whom.

Moreover, the case against her stated that she had a hand in the cover-up operation, which involved offshore accounts and encrypted messages.

In a victim statement, a widow in her mid-70s stated that the 'mental anguish is still with me today, and the guilt I harbor from being so vulnerable and easy prey to such sharks still swims in my mind.'

One woman in her mid-60s was swindled out of $35,000 and at the time of her testimony was still in the process of paying off the credit card debt she incurred.

Another woman, this one having lost $100,000, wrote to Shah about the 'emotional, mental, physical and financial anguish' she had suffered, telling the defendant: 'The burden you have caused me is overwhelming.'

One victim at the age of 77 wrote in her victim statement about Shah and her co-conspirators taking aim at 'senior citizens' in their scheme. 

In her new interview, Shah sensationally revealed she and her husband, football coach Sharrieff Shah, were 'separated' and on the 'verge of a divorce' while the scam was in progress, such that her 'judgment' was 'clouded' by 'my own personal pain.' 

The disgraced TV personality maintained that she 'thought I was doing the right thing for the majority of the time. I was working under people who were running these companies.'

Shah painted herself as having believed she was offering legitimate 'fulfillment' to the customers of the companies where she worked.

'What happened was down the line, people that I worked with were working with a lot of other people. Once that initial fulfillment was happening, things were happening beyond the point of sale with that customer that I didn’t know about,' she said.

'It can happen if you’re not careful, if you’re not being diligent and you’re not paying attention to the red flags. But you have a responsibility once you’re in that position to make sure it doesn’t,' Shah allowed.

She then, however, reverted to her previous self-exculpatory vein, saying: 'What's important for me to say — and I need to let people know — was at the same time, my involvement in this conspiracy overlapped with my own personal pain.'

Shah revealed: 'My husband and I were separated. We were on the verge of a divorce. I was overwhelmed with immense grief from the death of my grandmother, my father and my aunt, all in a very short period of time. I was spiraling deeper into my previously diagnosed clinical depression.'

She insisted that 'the reason I say all that is not as an excuse. Because it's not like I was making good business decisions and then I woke up one morning and all of a sudden it's like: "Oh, I made a bad business decision."

'This is the totality of everything that was going on and the overlapping of what I was dealing with personally. And I tried to avoid and numb all of that with alcohol and just avoid it. I trusted the wrong people at a very vulnerable time in my life.'

In her new interview, she also pulled back the curtain on the trial, revealing that the decision to switch her plea from not guilty to guilty came when she was presented with a tranche of evidence for the prosecution that felt 'like a train hit.' 

She claimed: 'That was the first time I saw all of it — the communications, the interviews, the witnesses. I saw for the first time that there were people who were hurt. That there were actual victims as a result of this conspiracy. I had never seen anything with my own eyes. That changed things for me.'

Shah served her time at the minimum-security women's Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas, which has acquired the nickname 'Camp Cupcake,' a title also given to the West Virginia prison that once contained Martha Stewart.

However Shah said that her first day behind bars 'took my breath away,' complaining: 'You hear people say it’s "Camp Cupcake" — it’s not. It’s prison. I just thought: "This cannot be where I'm going to be every day."'

Now, she is arranging to pay the $6.5 million court-ordered restitution and has 'made it my mission to make sure that people are paid back,' Shah said.

The Bureau of Prisons reduced her sentence on account of her good behavior, involvement in prison programming, and the restitution payments she had at that point already begun sending to the victims.

Originally set for release in 2029, her date was bumped up to August 2028, then to December 2027, and again to November 3, 2026 before she was finally permitted to leave custody on December 10, 2025.

Sharrieff, who remained with her through the storm of her scandal and imprisonment, was seen picking her up from the facility upon her release, along with two men who appeared to be the couple's grown sons Sharrieff Jr and Omar.

Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas has been home to a number of celebrity jailbirds, including Jeffrey Epstein's former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell and disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes.

In an unusual twist of fate, Shah bonded with fellow inmate Holmes, who is serving an 11-year sentence for fraud.

On multiple occasions, the pair were spotted working out together in the prison yard. 

In December 2024, Shah gave her fans an update as she served her sentence.

Her team shared a message to her website called Dear Jen Shah to share that she was 'doing very well' and was also focused on working on her 'personal self.' 

It was also added that Shah was 'focused on her journey towards positive rehabilitation' and had the chance to hold a conversation with co-star Meredith Marks on the phone. 

'Jen has indeed spoken with Meredith Marks [co-star], and the conversation was extremely positive. She loves Meredith and appreciates her friendship and support during this time.'