As two Real Housewives who have both faced time in prison on wire fraud charges, Jen Shah and Teresa Giudice would seem to have a lot in common – but Giudice doesn’t see it.
On her podcast this week, the RHONJ star, 50, rejected the comparisons to her The Real Salt Lake City counterpart, saying she just “can’t relate” to Shah.
“I can’t relate to that,” Giudice stated, “because I would never do something like that, you know?”
Last week, Shah, 49, was sentenced to six and a half years in federal prison for her role in a nationwide telemarketing scheme that allegedly defrauded many hundreds of people, many of them elderly.
Giudice, meanwhile, spent most of 2015 behind bars after pleading guilty to federal fraud charges, including bankruptcy, wire, and mail fraud.
But despite the obvious parallels, Giudice insisted on Wednesday’s episode of her podcast Namaste B$tches that the two cases were totally different.
“I would never steal anybody’s money,” the RHONJ star said. “That’s so mean, you know?”
Teresa Giudice claims innocence in her own wire fraud case
Giudice has long maintained her innocence in the bankruptcy fraud case, insisting that the blame lies fully with her ex-husband Joe Giudice.
The comparison to Shah, Giudice said on her podcast, “bothers” her because although she had served jail time, she, unlike Shah, was “really innocent.”
“I just signed papers that Joe told me to sign,” the OG Real Housewife added.
Joe Giudice, for his part, spent three and a half years in prison. After his release in the spring of 2019, he was deported to his native Italy.
Giudice went on to say that she and Joe’s four daughters – Gia, 22, Gabriella, 18, Milania, 16, and Audriana, 13 – believe she is innocent also.
“My kids know that I didn’t do anything,” the New Jersey native said because that’s what her ex told to the girls.
RHONJ star Teresa Giudice’s advice for prison: ‘keep it together’
She compared the situation to that of Jen Shah, whose family – her husband, University of Utah football coach Sharrieff Shah, and their two sons, Sharrieff Jr., 28, and Omar, 19 – were all present in court for her January 6 sentencing.
“When you’re stealing [from] people, and the kids [can] read this, and they’re like, ‘Mom, well, why’d you do this?'” Giudice said, “like, what do you say to your kids?”
Before her sentence was read out, a tearful Shah addressed her sons and husband, telling them she expressed her remorse and sorrow for the harm that she had caused.
Shah will begin her six-and-a-half-year prison sentence on February 17.
Did Giudice, whose best-selling 2017 memoir, “Standing Strong,” detailed her own incarceration, have any words of wisdom to share?
Just “keep it together as much as you [can] while you’re in there.”
The Real Housewives of New Jersey returns on Tuesday, February 7 at 9/8c on Bravo.