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Disgraced “Real Housewives of Salt Lake City” star Jen Shah was sentenced Friday to six-and-a-half-years in prison for heading a yearslong telemarketing scam that targeted elderly Americans.
Before sentencing, Shah pleaded for forgiveness from US District Judge Sidney Stein in a tearful address in Manhattan federal court.
“My actions have hurt innocent people. I want to apologize to all of the victims and their families,” she said, vowing to pay back all the money she swindled from her victims.
The shamed reality star told the judge she had gone against the “core values” of her upbringing — and broke down in tears while apologizing to her family and friends.
“I wish I had done better. I wish I could have stood outside myself and seen the harm I was causing and changed course,” she said.
Shah’s friends, family and fans packed the 23rd-floor courtroom for the hearing, including her mother, sons, and husband, University of Utah assistant football coach Sharrieff Shah.
But Judge Stein chided Shah before formally imposing the sentence, telling her that despite the restitution she’ll pay her victims, they’ll never actually be fully reimbursed.
“There’s no real way of being made whole again. They can’t really be made whole emotionally. Their lives have been turned upside down,” the judge said.
Assistant US Attorney Robert Sobelman, in remarks during the hearing, urged Stein to impose a lengthy sentence, highlighting the plight of victims targeted in the scam.
“These are older vulnerable people whose lives were turned upside down by the defendant’s telemarketing scam and they still suffer,” Sobelman said.
He added that Shah was not a minor player in a scheme that spanned nearly a decade.
“She’s at the top,” Sobelman said. “She ran her own floor and trained and hired people here in Manhattan for years.”
In a statement after the sentencing, US Attorney Damien Williams praised the penalty against Shah.
“With today’s sentence, Jennifer Shah finally faces the consequences of the many years she spent targeting vulnerable, elderly victims,” he said. “These individuals were lured in by false promises of financial security, but in reality, Shah and her co-conspirators defrauded them out of their savings and left them with nothing to show for it.”
Shah, 49, pleaded guilty in July to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud for providing “leads” about whom to target to a crew of telemarketers who duped victims into investing in dubious online projects.
The scammers offered their marks bogus business services beginning in 2012 — then pocketed the cash and provided the victims with “products” and “services” that were of little or no value.
At her plea hearing, Shah had told Stein she knew the services being offered were basically worthless.
“From 2012 to March 2021 in the Southern District of New York and elsewhere I agreed with others to commit wire fraud,” Shah said.
“I did this by knowingly providing customer names to people who were marketing business services that had little or no value,” she added.
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan had requested the fallen reality TV star be sentenced to 10 years in prison for her role in the scheme, arguing she helped siphon the life savings of her victims for nearly a decade.
“At the defendant’s direction, victims were defrauded over and over again until they had nothing left. She and her co-conspirators persisted in their conduct until the victims’ bank accounts were empty, their credit cards were at their limits, and there was nothing more to take,” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing submission.
Shah’s defense lawyers proposed in their own sentencing submission that she should serve three years in prison, arguing that while she played a significant role in the fraud, she wasn’t a leader of the operation.
“Ms. Shah’s piece of the puzzle, though important, was not enough to carry out this fraud without these other crucial pieces controlled and directed by experienced criminals (who were not Ms. Shah),” her attorneys wrote.
“There is neither reason nor evidence to place Ms. Shah at the ‘Godfather’ or ‘Kingpin’ level of this fraud,” they added.
Shah, who must report to prison by 2 p.m. Feb. 17, had faced a possible maximum of 30 years behind bars.
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