“Real Housewives of Salt Lake City” star Jen Shah has been arrested and charged with running a fraudulent telemarketing scheme.
Shan and her assistant/partner, Stuart Smith, have been charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud in connection with telemarketing, and conspiracy to commit money laundering, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, the special agent in charge of the New York field office of Homeland Security, and the commissioner of the New York City Police Department.
Shah and Smith were arrested Tuesday and will appear in Salt Lake City federal court on Tuesday afternoon.
According to a statement from Manhattan U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss, Shah and Smith “allegedly generated and sold lead lists of innocent individuals for other members of their scheme to repeatedly scam.” They’ve allegedly been operating the system since 2012.
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,” Strauss said in the statement. If convicted, “these defendants face time in prison for their alleged crimes,” Strauss added.
[Read more: Jen Shah can be ‘terrifying,’ but she’s electric on ‘Real Housewives of Salt Lake City’]
Shah is the wife of University of Utah assistant football coach Sharrieff Shah.
Shah, 47, was one of six women who starred in the first season of “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City,” and Smith — her “first assistant” — made several appearances on the show. Shah was often at the center of the narrative of “RHOSLC,” feuding with other cast members, tossing insults and glasses at parties and talking about her depression, which she attributed to her father’s death and her husband’s job-related absences. Shah, who is Tongan and Hawaiian, also talked frequently about the difficulties she encountered growing up in predominately white Utah.
Shah has her own marketing firm as well as JXA Fashion and Shah Lashes, and she recently launched Shah Beauty, described as “skincare for the modern woman.”
According to the charges against them, Shah and Smith “flaunted their lavish lifestyle to the public as a symbol of their success,” according to Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Special Agent in Charge Peter C. Fitzhugh, while “they allegedly built their opulent lifestyle at the expense of vulnerable, often elderly, working-class people.”
NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea said there were “hundreds of victims” in the scheme.
Fitzhugh said Shah and Smith “objectified their very real human victims as leads to be bought and sold, offering their personal information for sale to other members of their fraud ring.” He went on to say that the two “will answer for their crimes” and “as a result, their new reality may very well turn out differently than they expected.”
Shah, Smith and their associates “sold alleged services … including tax preparation or website design services, notwithstanding that many victims were elderly and did not own a computer,” according to the charges. Shah and Smith “at no point” intended “that the victims would actually earn any of the promised return on their intended investment,” the charges said, and the victims did not “earn any such returns.”
Shah and Smith sold lists of “leads” that had been generated in “sales floors” in places that include Utah, Arizona and Nevada, according to the charges. The owners of those sales floors “operated in coordination with several telemarketing sales floors in the New York and New Jersey area … and provided lead lists and assistance in fighting victim refund requests” from victims of the fraud.
The charges go on to say that Shah and Smith “undertook significant efforts to conceal their roles” in the scheme by incorporating their businesses using third parties’ names, and they instructed other participants to do the same. They also used “encrypted messaging applications to communicate with other participants”; instructed them to send fraud proceeds to offshore bank accounts; and “made numerous cash withdrawals structured to avoid currency transaction reporting requirements,” the charges said.
Shan and Smith, 43, have each been charged with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in connection with telemarketing through which they victimized 10 or more persons over the age of 55, which carries a maximum sentence of 30 years; and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years.
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