[hip hop plays]
COLT: When you think of Salt Lake City, it's Jen Shah.
I'm sorry, it's The Jen Shah Show.
DANA: She was giving us the money. She was giving us the looks.
Jen Shah's entire story is wild.
COLT: She gets a phone call.
It's someone telling her that she needs to leave,
and you can just tell, in Jen's eyes,
"Holy [bleep]. Like, I got to get out of here."
REPORTER: Real Housewives of Salt Lake City cast members
Jen Shah and Stuart Smith now face federal fraud charges.
COLT: It's all playing out live.
Like, we're breaking news live.
[cheering]
Much like Jen Shah at a party,
I don't know what we're gonna get,
but I do know that I'm gonna watch.
We were all scratching our heads, thinking,
"How does she make her money?"
COLT: Where is this money coming from?
She called herself the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain.
I don't think she's the Wizard.
[laughing] She's the Wicked Witch of the West.
♪ I'm a boss ♪
♪ I'm a I'm a boss ♪
REPORTER: Authorities claim Shah sold lists
of potential victims' information
for them to be repeatedly scammed.
I certainly would not continue shooting the show.
BRIAN: Oh, the feds are watching every bit of this
and taking notes.
Jen entered a plea of not guilty
and she maintains her innocence.
RICK: We constantly look at the lavish lifestyle
that these fraudsters are living.
RONALD: If convicted, she's not looking at one year,
she's looking at a decade.
I think what's being alleged is
this sort of preying on the American dream.
What fan wouldn't want to watch a show
that you take a regular person, give them an inspirational life,
put them on a pedestal,
Oh, my God! Jen!
Then, watch them implode...
-...about Mary! -Whoa!
DANA: Unravel...
[crying] Do you know how [bleep] scared I am?
DANA: ...and be able to judge them the whole way down?
♪♪
REPORTER: Okay, another exciting day.
Tonight is the premiere of Real Housewives of Salt Lake City,
the newest of the franchise on Bravo.
REPORTER: We've been waiting months and months for this.
[vehicle horns blaring]
JEN: Whoo!
♪♪
[horns blaring]
So, there hadn't been a new franchise in a while,
and then, we had a big premiere in a place where
no one thought we would ever have Real Housewives.
So, here's this new, really vibrant show
for us to get excited about.
[horns blaring]
Whoo!
Oh, my God!
♪ Ooh ♪
KELLEY: The Housewives franchise seems
to love the unpredictable, rich woman.
And if you can be a little bit unhinged,
but also fling a Chanel bag around, too, then sign me up.
Is the hair good?
DIRECTOR: Colt, thank you.
So, BravoCon happened in 2019.
It was a three-day event in New York City...
♪♪
...and it was a madhouse of Bravo-lebrities.
[clamoring]
MAN: Yes!
We love you!
BRIAN: BravoCon was the first-ever fan convention
for everything Bravo and, particularly,
everything Housewives, and fans really get whipped up
-into a frenzy. -PHOTOGRAPHER: Alright, 3, 2, 1.
At BravoCon, Andy Cohen announced
the newest city that was gonna be the new franchise.
-Salt Lake City, Utah. -[cheering]
And I was ready for him to go, "Oh, no, just joking,"
but then he was serious.
Salt Lake City?
It was just the weirdest city to choose.
It looked like it was going to be a different spin
and more authentic-feeling than some of the other shows.
♪ Yeah ♪
♪♪
COLT: My favorite thing about Salt Lake City is just
all six women that were on there,
there was something different about each and every one of them,
from religion to ethnicity, to background.
This was the first diverse cast
that I've seen them introduce from the beginning.
You have the Mormon royalty
who now likes to party and be a little promiscuous.
You had Jewish Housewives who had become Mormons...
...but now runs a tequila company.
And then you have the woman who is married
to her grandmother's second husband.
Yes. Her grandpa.
You can't make this up.
And I thought that those things
were gonna make for really good reality TV.
And then, Jen Shah said, "Hold my beer."
Aah!
I want it be Shah-mazing.
I want it to be Shah-bulous.
HOST: She's a self-proclaimed diva!
Jen Shah. The drama, you're bringing it.
-Yeah. -We are bringing it.
And I'm very passionate.
I mean, I'm Polynesian, right?
Anybody that knows Polynesians,
Tongans, we're very passionate.
She can find drama where the rest of us only see comedy.
Her persona is wildly over-the-top.
Shut the [bleep] up!
There's just a switch with Jen Shah.
Like, one second she'll be fine, and another she goes ballistic.
♪♪
That's what happens when you [bleep] film me
in the [bleep] bathtub!
She just was like the queen of the pop-off.
Shut the [bleep] up about Mary!
There's that old saying that
someone brought a knife to a gunfight.
It seems like Jen Shah always brought
a nuclear missile to a gunfight.
Like, it was always just so much more of a crazy reaction
than the situation really needed.
Her feud with Mary Cosby on Season 1 is everything.
You smell like hospital.
My aunt just got her legs amputated.
KELLEY: When she got into a fight with Mary
over Mary allegedly saying that somebody smelled like hospital.
I didn't know that that was an insult, first of all.
This is where we are in these franchises,
is that one small dispute began World War I.
The "smells like hospital" begins World War Jen.
♪♪
SCOTT: We called it OdorGate.
It was just totally strange.
And it became the fight that lasted
the entirety of the season.
The entirety of the season.
What makes for a great Housewife is
someone that has their loyal fans...
♪ Hey ♪
♪♪
...but also people that despise them.
♪♪
And Jen Shah checks every box.
In her casting tape,
as we see the private jet in the background,
she says that she spends about $50,000 a month.
There are like 20 pieces of luggage when we travel,
and like maybe 17 are mine.
We don't really see what Jen is doing at her job.
We're more focused on her throwing these crazy parties.
I remember hearing that she spent $80,000 on a party.
What's the most you've ever spent on a party at the chalet?
[laughs]
Probably $82,000.
$80,000?
Do I believe it? Yeah. [laughing] For sure.
♪ Paper money ♪
♪ You're so funny ♪
I met Jen Shah in March 2020.
My name is Koa Johnson, and I'm a fashion designer.
I was in charge of styling her, creating these custom gowns, pieces.
♪♪
My job really was to create an image for her.
The most expensive dress that I designed for her
and made for her was her intro dress.
The feathers alone were about $2,500.
So, we're talking at least a $10,000 to $12,000 gown.
DANA: One of the criteria
when you're casting for a Housewives franchise is
you have to have an inspirational lifestyle.
♪ Isn't it funny? ♪
♪ Cash, dollar, money ♪
DANA: They have a beautiful house to shoot in, fancy cars, and diamonds.
Anything that would make you want to be that person or live that life.
♪♪
I've loved jewelry ever since I was a little girl.
I love emeralds because they're good luck.
And green, I mean, green reminds me of money.
DANA: Jen Shah does this interview with Marie Claire
about her love of diamonds and jewelry.
JEN: The emeralds are 8.85 carats.
It makes me feel like the Wizard of Oz, basically, okay?
Green. We love it.
KOA: Image is everything to her --
how she looks, how people see her,
how she sees herself.
♪ Money, money, money ♪
♪ Make my world go round ♪
On the show, Jen Shah has this group of people, called the Shah Squad...
♪♪
...that are doing everything for Jen Shah --
glam, hair, makeup, stylists,
and several assistants, one of which is Stuart Smith.
There's just something off about Stu.
KELLEY: He just looked a little too grown to be her assistant.
And I didn't know why he was there,
holding her bag at the Botox medispa.
Like why? Why are you there, Stu?
Why?
-I feed you while you work. -[laughs]
While you make me money, I feed you.
[laughing] What does Stuart do for Jen Shah?
I believe he's worked for Jen for at least 12 years,
so he was right down the hall from my studio office.
He'd do computer work, on the phone all the time.
CHRIS: On Michelle Collins' SiriusXM radio show,
she says she can count on him 100%,
he does it all.
It's just insane to know that
it takes a "squad" to live like Jen Shah,
when in reality, we're just getting
behind the curtain of what really does take
to live like Jen Shah.
♪♪
On Heather Gay's podcast, Heather asked
what did Jen Shah want to do for a living.
"What did you think you wanted to be?" Heather asks.
You would think, if you were her,
if I wanted to get attention
and if I wanted to be known, where would I go?
We see it on her social media.
Jen and her husband, Sharrief,
look like they've built this great life with their family.
♪♪
LEHUA: Jen and Sharrief are the perfect match.
Um, they're able to play hard and work hard together.
I'm Lehua Vincent.
Um, I'm Jen's aunt.
I describe her as the mom every kid wants.
Fun, fun mom.
You know, working into the late hours
because she's so committed
to provide a great life for her sons.
But the question of where the money comes from
is always there, lurking in the background.
[suspenseful music plays]
DANA: I think in the beginning,
the fans believed she was making a lot of money
for that lifestyle, but then over time,
something was just not adding up.
People are wondering, like, how'd you get so rich?
DANA: I've listened to several interviews
of Jen Shah trying to describe what she does.
What do you actually do?
I mean, I run a lot
of different companies and businesses.
Like, she's just saying a lot of words.
I mean, she said the word "algorithm" a lot.
When you're shopping online or on the Internet,
we have the algorithm behind
why you're getting served that ad.
Like it's so confusing.
[laughing] Shah-confusing.
AARON: We've never heard Jen Shah give a straight answer
when asked how she made the money
to support the lifestyle she was living.
Are there things that she's hiding?
We were about to find out a lot more
about what was going on in her life outside the show.
[upbeat hip hop plays]
COLT: When the women sign on to become Real Housewives,
they always tell them, "If you have any secrets,
they're gonna come out."
♪♪
KOA: She was definitely very secretive on a lot of things.
The items that you see, like the fur coats,
they're not owned by her.
Any of the large jewelry that you see on her,
those are leased and borrowed as well.
♪♪
Did Jen Shah drive around in a Porsche?
Yes. Does she drive in a Porsche now?
No. [laughing] Why?
Well, it wasn't her Porsche.
That's not her car.
DANA: There seems to be a discrepancy with Jen Shah and her lifestyle
and the amount of money
that her and Coach Shah could possibly be making.
[suspenseful hip hop plays] What's up, Hard Work?
We've got what we are told is a two-income family.
Sharrief is a highly successful, uh, coach
at the University of Utah.
KELLEY: As an assistant coach, he could make a nice, you know,
reasonable six-figure salary, but $50,000 a month?
You don't get that from that salary.
♪♪
Sharrief and Jen have been together for, you know,
more than two decades, at this point.
I feel like he probably should've asked a question like,
"How can we afford to do this, honey?""
♪♪
As we saw on the show, she hid a full party from him.
It seemed like maybe she had this --
a pattern that she would hide things from him.
♪♪
I mean, we found out that he
at one point called a divorce lawyer.
He obviously backed away from that.
COLT: Marriages have secrets.
Marriages have lies and deceit.
Is Jen Shah being open,
or is her theatrics and her struggles
to distract everyone from really-- the questions they really have?
DANA: Jen Shah comes off on the show
as a little bit unhinged.
♪♪
Every scene, she's, like, screaming,
and in real life, there are moments where
she's always screaming.
She's actually worse off-screen.
♪♪
DANA: Basically, the Internet went into hysteria when a video seemed
to drop on Instagram of Jen Shah screaming at her employees.
She did say in her last -- in a couple of her interviews
that she's the Wizard of Oz,
the woman behind the curtain.
I don't think she's the Wizard.
[laughing] I think she's the Wicked Witch of the West.
This is right before she's about to film
her first reunion show, um,
which, I can understand how stressful that might be.
She was getting upset in that video,
'cause she came to a realization that
she was not prepared.
[clattering]
She threw a chili bowl at me...
And then stormed out of frame,
like, walked off of the secret videotape.
KOA: We do not know who recorded this,
because during those times there were a lot of people,
other employees, my interns, her friends, her colleagues.
So, it could've been really anybody.
When the video was leaked, it showed Jen to be a bully
and to be really somebody
who was totally unhinged in real life.
I was a bit surprised to hear the tapes.
Not only how harsh Jen was being,
but how long these tirades were going on.
It was minutes and minutes and minutes.
There were a few of them that made the rounds on social media.
At that point, I was so exhausted.
Like, I was not sleeping. Yeah, it's just, um...
In Polynesian culture,
we argue, we scream at each other,
but it comes from a loving place.
When I got yelled at Jen, there was nothing for me to,
I feel, like, really learn.
It was not gonna get better at a certain point,
like, no matter what I did.
I think that crossed a line and a boundary for me.
I decided to just get a one-way ticket to Hawaii
and I left.
So, the last paid compensation I got from her
was in September 2020,
but I worked for her all the way up to January.
As far as my other coworkers, they made it known to me
that they were not being compensated, as well.
He took my kindness
and repaid me by making it look like I mistreated him,
which was not the case at all.
DANA: Her position was that Koa had not delivered on,
uh, some of the dress work
that she had provided him a lot of resources to get,
and she just lost it finding that out.
LEHUA: What you see on The Real Housewives
is so twisted at times, as far as, uh,
what they like you to think or believe,
uh, their character of Jen Shah to be.
But the real Jen Shah, the person that I know,
she has dealt with adversity every single day of her life
and, through it all, achieved.
She's accomplished many things in school
from a very young age.
BETH: Jen and I were classmates.
My kids and I were sitting there watching in our living room,
and I was like, "Oh, my God,
that's Jen Lui from high school."
There was maybe four or five other people of color
that were in the high school.
The Mormons were a big thing in this tight-knit community.
It wasn't an easy place to be.
Jen was introduced to a level of racism.
I remember her on one afternoon coming home from school.
I noticed that her skin was just bright --
had a bright, bright, bright red tint to it.
And she said, "I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed,
and it won't come off."
And I said, "What are you talking about?
What won't come off?"
And she said, "The kids at school are calling me dirty
and I'm trying to scrub it off.
It won't come off." And...
They saw her as different enough to ridicule her,
make her feel different and feel less than.
Fortunately, through all of the adversity,
we're here to support her.
[siren wails]
REPORTER: Real Housewives of Salt Lake City
star Jennifer Shah under arrest.
I heard of Jen's arrest the morning of March 30th.
And it's everywhere that Jen Shah was arrested.
REPORTER: Jen Shah and her partner Stuart Smith arrested.
It was not something anyone could've imagined.
The whole time she was filming the show,
law enforcement was investigating her.
OMG. They're filming the season right now.
♪♪
She's meeting up with her friends.
They're about to go on a cast trip, and she gets a phone call.
[cellphone rings]
It's someone telling her that she needs to leave,
and you can just tell in Jen's eyes...
She looks into the camera. She knows she's cornered.
"Holy [bleep] Like, I gotta get out of here."
It was crazy. It had all the tension.
It had all the intrigue, the drama.
We know when they ask for a microphone rip-off
that something's going on.
Some time elapses.
When they blur the policeman's face out,
it's just real life at that point.
RICK: In any of our operations,
we don't look for specific timing to do arrests.
In the case of Jen Shah, she had a television crew
that was following her on a regular basis, right,
so it was not planned in any way.
MAN: What are you guys doing in there?
Our investigators, our special agents
needed to do our job, and I'm happy to say
they did it without incident, and she was taken into custody.
Being accused of running a nationwide,
telemarketing fraud scheme.
She's charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud,
and then conspiracy to commit money laundering.
One holds a penalty of maximum sentence of 30 years in prison,
and the other holds a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
-Very serious. -Very serious.
SCOTT: Stuart was arrested the same day.
Apparently he was at his home in Lehi
when all this was happening.
They each entered pleas of not guilty,
and before you knew it, on her own Instagram,
there was the #FreeJenShah hashtag,
promulgated by Jen Shah.
AARON: The charges stem from an investigation
that's been going on for years.
It started with a case in New York
that eventually leads investigators to Jen Shah.
In January 2016, we started Operation Double Down
based on an arrest made by the NYPD,
uh, for narcotics smuggling.
The individual who was supplying the narcotics
was also involved in a huge telemarketing fraud.
AARON: The individual, Arash Ketabchi,
and his co-defendants were indicted in 2017
for operating telemarketing companies
that sold nonexistent products and services
from sales floors in New Jersey and New York.
This trial was called The United States vs. Ketabchi.
The allegations in this case were essentially a group of telemarketers,
uh, were calling up people
and making misrepresentations in order to get their money.
Here's how we understand what a typical scam is like.
It's a big web of overlapping telemarketing companies
that oftentimes work together to scam victims.
It all might start innocently enough.
The potential victim,
they might've clicked on an ad on Facebook.
It seems like the triggering words for a typical ad
would be "Work from home."
The first thing you usually buy, under $100.
ERIC: You don't realize that your contact information
is now fed into a list.
JACOB: And right away, the telemarketers have your name,
they have your contact information,
they even have your credit card information.
AGNIESZKA: They would pass, um, what we call lead lists
from one telemarketing floor to another.
And these telemarketing companies
offer all sorts of other services.
They claim to help you build a website,
to boost your social media profile, to market yourself.
They'll offer coaching services.
you're paying for all of this,
and the calls never stop. They keep coming and coming.
But they're just there to prime you
for the next sale of something that doesn't exist.
INTERVIEWER: Did you agree to invest in this opportunity?
Yes, I did.
I think the initial was $30,000.
One business that, uh, required I, uh, send them $8,000.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. And did you do that?
Yes.
And that's what really started --
started me thinking that I'm way in too deep.
JACOB: These leads were of a particular group of people,
and in this case, the government was alleging
that it was the elderly.
I didn't own a computer at that time.
INTERVIEWER: Um, were you comfortable using computers?
No.
INTERVIEWER: Were you comfortable using the Internet at that time?
No.
JACOB: If you're calling up somebody
who maybe is not particularly Internet savvy
or business savvy, that's kind of a problem.
In one recording, the telemarketers are heard
talking to one another about charging Charlene
thousands of dollars without her knowing.
I thought I could handle it myself,
but of course I couldn't.
Pretty overwhelming.
INTERVIEWER: And to your knowledge, have you gotten
any of the money you spent back?
No. Mm-mm.
Arash Ketabchi and his co-defendants
were sentenced to prison in 2019,
but the investigation was not over.
The feds found evidence that led them
to more shady telemarketing floors,
this time out west, in Arizona, in Nevada, and in Utah.
And that is where they allege Jen Shah came in.
We constantly look at the lavish lifestyle
that these fraudsters are living, and it hurts.
It really does hurt, because when you --
when you talk to a victim
and you see how everything they've worked for
completely vanished, it's disturbing,
and it's obviously why we do this job
and we wanna make sure it stops.
So, we just continued on with our investigation,
and we were able to identify the other telemarketing floors
in Nevada and Utah and Arizona
that were doing the same thing
that they were doing here in New Jersey.
Except, to our surprise,
these people have been doing this for over 10 years.
The stories you hear are shocking and heartbreaking,
because they exploit not the greed of people,
but the good of people.
The typical mark for a work-at-home scam
is someone unemployed, on disability,
they've retired early, they're on a pension.
These are the targets of those businesses.
♪♪
PENNY: In 1980, we moved to the family farm.
At that time, we had two kids, a third one on the way,
and the farm was good.
Around 2011, things got rough.
The economy was bad.
The bank, um, decided that they would allow my husband
to continue to farm for another year
to see if he could turn it around, and he couldn't.
So, at that point, I had some sewing skills,
and so my mother had developed kind of a snuggle-type blanket,
and so I decided that maybe that was something
that I could market online.
When it's cool, if you want to take a kid out in the stroller,
they stay wrapped up and nice and cozy and warm.
I loved to sew, so I could make some money in the process.
RONALD: They see a sharp ad that says,
"Hey, you can make money doing this.
It's only 99 bucks."
I purchased a program, and it was like $97,
to market on social media and on eBay.
Penny clicked an ad for a work-at-home business,
and we can assume her name wound up on a lead list,
and that meant it was open season on her,
because she was seen as being susceptible
to salespeople getting her to buy more stuff.
So that lead is then sold to a company
that's gonna hit this person up
with all sorts of other services,
even though the company that they're starting
has really no chance of making any money.
Wolf of Wall Street is very similar
to a lot of sales floors.
The only problem you're gonna have is that you didn't buy more.
Boom!
ERIC: There are salespeople, you know,
they're racking up tens of thousands of dollars a week.
It's a very crazy environment.
I started getting calls from all different companies.
The first one was a company called Ecommerce.
Let's help you make your dream a reality.
We've just gotta figure out how much
we can put on your credit card first.
What started out to be a $97 thing turned in to be $9,000,
but they said that I would be making money,
like $1,000 a week in the first two weeks.
And so I thought, "Well, wow, you know,
it wouldn't take very long for --
to get your money back, you know, return on investment."
If that was actually the case.
It wasn't the case.
Ecommerce, the first company to contact Penny,
was owned by a man named Kevin Handren,
and five years later, Handren would be arrested,
and eventually named as a co-defendant
in the case against Jen Shah.
These alleged scams are selling you coaching services
that tell you, "Just work harder at this and buy more things."
It's like a psychological manipulation.
These people, you've gotta understand, are really smooth.
They know how to manipulate you.
The costs go up and up and up,
and once you're in water up to your ankles,
they can get you in water up to your knee,
up to your waist, and finally over your head.
PENNY: I started this process in March,
and by the end of September, I had spent over $29,000.
So, it got to the point where we couldn't keep up
with the monthly payments.
So, we ended up having to refinance our home
and pay off our credit card debt.
When I realized that I'd been had,
I was devastated.
I was so ashamed,
because I thought I was a smarter person than that.
RICK: The folks that are behind this are pros at what they do.
It is disgusting, and what we'd like to tell any victim is,
"It's not your fault.
Please come forward, because we need your help
to make sure this doesn't happen to more people."
I sold zero blankets through any of the marketing techniques
that they presented.
I've got boxes of snuggle blankets.
I give them away as gifts.
They make really good gifts for new moms, so...
I like to buy people things. That's how I show love.
I'm gonna give you this snake ring
because you could shed your skin and be a better person.
[laughs]
-What's the message? -I'm still a snake.
While investigators were gathering evidence from victims
and learning a little more about Jen Shah's work history,
Dana Wilkey, who has a podcast, was doing her own research.
DANA: When the show Real Housewives of Salt Lake City aired,
I found that Jen Shah had a LinkedIn page.
From 2006 to present,
she was director of business development for Prosper, Inc.
I also found a picture of Jen Shah
from that period of time,
and she looks like a corporate executive.
She does not look anything like what we see today
on The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City.
It's like a different person.
AARON: While Jen Shah was working at Prosper,
the company made national news.
In 2007, one of its sales floor employees
sued the company for waterboarding him.
He was, uh, at a company event
as a, like, motivational exercise.
Instead of building the human pyramid or trust falls,
he was waterboarded,
and the individual waterboarding him,
allegedly, was saying, "See how he's struggling to breathe?
Like, that's how hard you should be working
[laughing] to make your sales."
Uh, I shouldn't laugh. Uh, it's terrible.
But, that was, uh, Prosper's own unique work culture,
as alleged in that lawsuit.
Prosper eventually settled with the employee
for an undisclosed amount.
When I found Jen Shah's Prosper, Inc. LinkedIn,
I posted it on my Instagram.
She immediately deleted her page.
FTC investigators learn that Jen Shah
left Prosper in 2011
and went to work at another telemarketing company
called Thrive.
♪♪
LEHUA: Jen's worked so hard in her career.
I remember she was so excited that she made it,
she's one of the VPs.
And I remember her sharing with me
how they have, um, a regular meeting that they attend as VPs,
and she had found out she wasn't invited.
That was her turning point where she decided
she would start her own business,
she would start her own company, she would do her own thing.
The FTC deposed Jen Shah in 2015 about her work at Thrive.
Two years later,
they fine Thrive $27 million for deceptive sales practices.
We believe $27 million should've set an alarm bell off
in Jen Shah's head that this is probably a business
she shouldn't continue doing.
What the Southern District is hoping to prove
is that Jen Shah and Stuart Smith
went from just selling these leads
to actually trying to sell nonexistent services
to the marks that they took advantage of.
And so it's that turn
that allegedly places her in greater legal jeopardy.
CESIE: The government alleges Jen and Stuart
started messaging through encrypted applications
so you couldn't read their text messages
and created shell companies in Kosovo
and kept doing it for -- at least through March 2021,
when she was eventually arrested.
I don't think we do enough, um, to make our public aware,
um, about the different types of schemes
and frauds that are out there right now,
especially during COVID when people are home
and, um, they're on their computers
and, you know, they're constantly answering their phones.
And these perpetrators know that this is a prime time.
And then, a 67-year-old preschool teacher in Atlanta
was trying to start an online health and beauty business.
MARIE: It was August 2020, and I wasn't working,
'cause there wasn't any jobs coming up.
No teaching, no subbing, no anything.
So, I've always had this thought of doing a home-based business.
I said, "Okay, I'll hire somebody
to help me build a website,
build it the right way, the correct way."
Marie clicked on an ad for home-based businesses
and was soon inundated with calls
from telemarketing companies.
MARIE: So, from the beginning,
the companies wanted to know about my finances.
They asked about credit card limits, 401(k)s.
They asked about everything.
Marie spends more and more and more money,
in pursuit of this innocent idea she had
to start a business from home.
Among the sales floor that besieged Marie Walker
is a company called Mastery Pro,
which allegedly is a shell company connected to Jen Shah.
Mastery Pro allegedly had assets of $5 million.
From Mastery Pro, I did purchase a social media package,
but I would need to send in $1,000 from my bank
to their bank, that Mountain bank in Utah,
for a social media boost package.
In January 2021, I started having a lot of problems
with the website.
I was trying to reach the marketing,
the coaching, the website builders,
and I just couldn't reach anybody.
There was no website, nothing.
My head was really spinning there.
I said, "All this is just a scam."
I contacted all my credit card companies, my banks.
I contacted the police department, made reports.
I contacted the FTC.
I put in a total of about $18,000.
I did get back some on my, you know, credit cards,
about $8,000.
But the rest is lost.
If I can talk to the people that scammed me, I would say,
"Would you do this to your mother?
To your sister? And why?
Why would you do this?
And why would you keep doing it?"
Tonight, Real Housewives of Salt Lake City
reality show star facing serious allegations.
REPORTER: Jen Shah and Stuart Smith
now face federal fraud charges.
REPORTER: Ms. Shah, we're with KSL TV.
Do you have a comment on the charges at all?
Do you have a message for your family? Your kids?
REPORTER: You've been charged with wire fraud
and money laundering.
LEHUA: Seeing members of law enforcement approach Jen's home
and place her teenage son,
her nephew, her nephew's wife, and their young son at gunpoint
and treat them, these purely innocent people,
as if they were criminals, it's very traumatizing.
She had to put $250,000 cash
towards the bond guarantee that she would show up in court.
What was remarkable was she had no assets.
She had to put real cash instead of, um, real property,
because she didn't have a house.
They were renting,
which I thought was an interesting anomaly,
where Stuart Smith just put up a house.
When I first heard about Jen's arrest,
it was a madhouse on social media.
Every Bravo account you can think of, every news outlet
was talking about Jen Shah.
To see Jen walk out of a courthouse
and read stories about her
allegedly being in criminal activity,
that's not the Jen I know or knew.
JEN: The only think I'm guilty of is being Shah-mazing.
AARON: Jen Shah continues to be in the spotlight...
WOMAN: Are you Jen Shah?
[laughter]
Oh, my God. Jen.
...even when she's not filming
The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City.
Wait, can I give you a hug?
Yes.
AARON: In October 2021,
she was paid to appear at an event at the Hustler Club,
a strip club in New York,
while she has criminal charges pending against her.
I do know that the housewives make a lot of money
doing public appearances,
and I'm sure a porn star's lap dance party
can put a lot of money towards your legal funds.
However, it doesn't seem to be the best move for her
while she's accused of what are very serious crimes.
It was catnip.
Everything that you see her do, you go, "That's Jen Shah."
Jen Shah does Jen Shah better than anybody.
Jen going to trial is going to be
really, really dramatic television for Bravo,
[laughing] which their fan base... they will eat it up alive.
AARON: There's plenty of speculation about what a defense might be,
though Jen and her attorneys certainly aren't talking about their strategy.
RONALD: Generally, I believe her defenses
are that she's not the one
that is selling these other services,
she's just providing leads,
and that she shouldn't be criminally liable.
ERIC: If you're just a lead generator,
you're the most removed from anything that would be illegal
or fraudulent or unethical.
"I just provide you with numbers.
You dial them, and I hope that you're being forthright
and honest with these people."
Jen Shah's gonna say, "No, I was good at getting leads,
and what they did with the leads is their problem."
She could say, "I didn't know that they were making promises
when they were on the phone.
As far as I knew, they were all following the rules,
so why should I be in trouble?"
Just business. It's business as usual.
I would defend her by saying the only witnesses in this case
are all gonna be people that have admitted they're con artists,
that are so good at lying that they duped hundreds of people
for millions of dollars on a monthly basis,
and the only reason why they're sort of talking
is because if they cooperate,
the government will file a motion to lower their sentence.
Why would you trust them?
My client's presumed innocent.
JACOB: I think whenever you have somebody who's famous
who's on trial, it complicates the dynamics of a trial.
'Cause the Jen Shah party don't stop, hey!
CESIE: Because Jen Shah is a celebrity,
the government could send a warning signal to others
that if Jen Shah can go down for this,
you can go down for this, too,
if you're engaged in the same alleged behavior.
[cheering]
RONALD: When you're a celebrity or a quasi celebrity,
you always have a defense as, "Why am I targeted here?"
I can see the prosecutors arguing
this person has shown no remorse.
She's flaunting massive amounts of wealth.
This was supposed to be the exercise room,
and I turned it into a closet.
You might not want to brag about that
in the middle of a criminal investigation.
The U.S. attorney's office is no joke.
Do we need to add Kim Kardashian to our legal team?
I just cannot believe that this is the world we live in,
where Kim Kardashian is possibly Jen Shah's saving grace.
MAN: To the right, Kim. Kim, to the right.
Now, that is a spin-off I need to watch.
I think she's not thinking clearly.
While she's facing charges, she's filming, makes no sense.
CESIE: I can't predict whether or not she's guilty or innocent,
but I can say that it seems
the government is very prepared to make their case.
JACOB: The Southern District of New York
is very good at what they do.
They have a very high percentage win rate at trial.
The words "Not guilty" by a jury is very rare.
Not knowing that something is illegal is not a defense.
You have to actually lack knowledge of what's going on.
As a result of the risks that are involved,
it's a very strong incentive
for people to take a plea or to cooperate.
REPORTER: Jen Shah's co-defendant, Stuart Smith,
did exactly that.
Eight months after the arrest,
he pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy and obstruction,
admitting that he hid money and defrauded elderly people,
and he didn't say who he conspired with,
but everybody knows his association with Jen Shah.
Together, the charges to which he pleaded guilty
carry a maximum of 70 years in prison.
He's sentenced in March of 2022.
She's gonna have a hard time attacking his credibility,
because they were best of buddies until the arrest.
JEN: I appreciate you sticking with me
through the bad times, the good times.
I know that you'll always be there,
and I'll always be here for you.
Stuart is more than a business partner.
He is very loyal.
RONALD: Stuart knows where the bodies are buried,
and I think that if he testifies,
that's gonna be a devastating witness for her.
CHRIS: I think it's an uphill battle
for the people who have been scammed.
I think their chances of being whole once again are minimal,
regardless of what the verdict is.
When you talk to a victim and you see everything they've worked for,
and then you see where these fraudsters are living,
the best lives they can live
and not worrying about money in any kind of way,
they don't have a problem sleeping at night.
I have a problem sleeping at night.
Oh, my gosh. This one right here.
We are going to try our best to --
to get as much of their money back as possible.
Getting restitution for the victims
is always our -- our number-one priority.
I lost around, um, a little over $29,000,
but I was able to get about $16,000 of it back
by filing complaints,
fraud complaints with the credit card,
the attorney general's office, and with the FTC.
The money that we seize and will continue to recover
is not even a fraction of what the victims have lost,
unfortunately,
because these people lived very lavish lifestyles
and able to hide their money overseas.
There's a lot of countries
that don't recognize money laundering as a crime,
so we're not able to seize that money.
These are serious charges because when you have a lot of victims
and a lot of money, the sentencing guidelines go up.
Unfortunately for Miss Shah,
if convicted, it's gonna be a high sentence.
I mean, she's not looking at one year,
she's looking at a decade.
MAN: How are you liking New York?
If Jen Shah has been proven to scam people or defraud people,
then she needs to be punished.
I think that we all need to wait and see how it lands
and see whether or not she's guilty.
LEHUA: This is the most difficult time
for our entire family.
The Jen Shah that I know is,
uh, a woman who has come from a culture
that is deeply rooted in honesty, loyalty, and hard work.
There's just no way that Jen has the ability to be harmful
or hurtful or disrespectful.
We're innocent until proven guilty,
and she should be treated as such,
and I believe her to be nothing but innocent.
Fame really is the ultimate high.
And I think that Jen may be someone
who's really great for reality TV
who, you know-- maybe she didn't do it.
We love to watch it, but should Jen Shah be able
to make money by continuing to be on this show?
For us as fans, for them as a network,
it's all very gray, and I wish I had an easy answer.
But until we have that answer,
I'm just gonna keep watching Housewives.
KELLEY: That's the thing that we have to keep in mind
when we watch these shows.
We're actually talking about real people
who are the victims, and it's not fair.
CHRIS: She is not afraid of the limelight.
If the camera's pointed at her, even if it's unflattering,
Jen Shah doesn't seem to mind.
Will that have something to do with
how she deals with this latest chapter?
I guess we'll have to see.
-I watch a lot of Dancing with the Stars. -INSTRUCTOR: Perfect.
Nobody puts Jen Shah in a corner, okay?
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