Formerly imprisoned Real Housewives of Salt Lake City alum Jen Shah said pleading guilty to fraud was “the hardest decision I’ve ever made.”
In an interview with PEOPLE, Jen detailed how “heartbreaking” it was to feel “like I let a lot of people down.” Still, the former RHOSLC star maintained that she believed she was behaving within the limits of the law long into the investigation against her. Author Dave Quinn wrote, “Shah’s account differs from how prosecutors characterized her role.” The indictment shows Jen at the center of the financial scandal.”
Jen was in denial:
“I truly believed I was innocent,” explained Jen. “For 16 months, my attorneys were asking the government, ‘Where is the evidence?’ We had the accusations in the indictment, but not the documentation to back it up.”
A document dump in July 2022 was the reality check Jen needed. “It was like a train hit,” recalled Jen. “That was the first time I saw all of it: the communications, the interviews, the witnesses they were going to call — everything.”
“My attorneys explained it’s not about proving you directly did something. It’s about whether a jury believes you were part of it,” she says. “I really thought the truth would prevail, and they said, ‘It’s not about the truth at trial. It’s about the story the jury believes.'”
“I remember asking my attorneys, ‘They’ve never met me. If they get on the stand and say this, they would be lying.’ My attorney said, ‘Jen, they don’t care. They have nothing to lose if it’ll help them.'”
Jen faced reality:
Finally, the mother of two realized the damage she’d done. “I saw for the first time that there were people who were hurt. There were actual victims as a result of this conspiracy. I had never seen anything with my own eyes. That changed things for me.”
Jen maintains that she never had direct contact with victims. However, the government has previously said otherwise. Sentencing documents filed in December 2022 claimed that Jen was “not ignorant” of the victims. She “took a series of increasingly extravagant steps to conceal her criminal conduct from the authorities.”
Still, Jen says she’s “deeply sorry” and wants the victims of her scheme to understand that while there may be an explanation, there’s no excuse for what happened.
What didn’t factor, insisted Jen, was any proposed deal from the prosecution. “Oh no, there was no deal. I accepted a guilty plea for a conspiracy to commit wire fraud. There was no, ‘Hey, take this deal, and then you’re not going to have other charges or anything.’ It’s what it was.”
