Federal prosecutors are requesting a full decade in prison for The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City star Jen Shah, court documents reveal.
In July, Shah pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud over her alleged role in a nationwide telemarketing scheme that targeted elderly victims.
Her sentencing is scheduled for Friday.
The court filing, dated December 23, called the 49-year-old reality star an “integral leader” in a “wide-ranging, nationwide telemarketing fraud scheme that victimized thousands of innocent people.”
United States Attorney Damian Williams, of the Southern District of New York, wrote that Shah, “and her co-conspirators persisted… until the victims’ bank accounts were empty, their credit cards were at their limits, and there was nothing more to take.”
“At the defendant’s direction,” Williams wrote, “victims were defrauded over and over again until they had nothing left.”
RHOSLC’s Jen Shah pleads for leniency ahead of sentencing
In March of 2021, Shah and her assistant, 43-year-old Stuart Smith, were charged with both conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering in connection with the scheme, in which, according to the US Attorney’s Office, they, “generated and sold ‘lead lists’ of innocent individuals for other members of their scheme to repeatedly scam.”
Shah initially pleaded not guilty to both charges; but, over the summer, just a week before her trial was set to begin, she changed her plea to guilty in what NBC News called a “dramatic courtroom reversal.”
As part of her plea agreement, the money laundering charge was thrown out.
Shah agreed to forfeit $6.5 million and to pay up to $9.5 million in restitution to victims of the scheme. The reality star also faces up to 14 years in prison.
In court documents filed earlier this month, members of Shah’s family – including her husband, University of Utah football coach Sharrieff Shah – begged the judge for leniency in her upcoming sentencing, pointing to her role as a wife and mother.
In her own statement, Shah wrote that she was “genuinely sorry” for the harm that she had caused.
Shah and her lawyers requested a reduced sentence of three years in prison.
At her lawyers’ request, Shah’s sentencing was postponed from November 28 to this Friday, January 6.
Victims describe ‘anguish’ caused by telemarketing scheme
The most recent court filing also includes several previously unreported victim impact statements, including one from a woman in Canada who lost more than $100,000 to the scheme.
As a result, the woman said that she was forced to take out a second mortgage and that she continues to struggle with affording health care for her “critically ill” husband.
The woman wrote that the devastating losses had ruined her financially, almost ended her marriage, and even led her to contemplate suicide.
“The burden you have caused me is overwhelming,” the woman wrote to Shah. “I can’t even really put words to the amount of anguish you have caused.”
The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City airs Wednesdays at 9/8c on Bravo.