Jen Shah has moved on from The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City to the big house.
Her lawyer, Priya Chaudhry, told EW that the troubled reality star turned herself in to a federal prison in Bryan, Texas, on Friday to start serving her six-and-a-half-year sentence for a telemarketing fraud scheme.
Chaudhry didn’t say anything else, but in a statement to PEOPLE on Thursday, she said that her client was “determined to make her victims whole and to turn her life around.”
“She is committed to serving her sentence with courage and purpose, driven by her desire to make up for the pain she has caused and to help others in her new community,” the statement said. “Nothing will stop Jen from making the most of her time in prison, and she is determined to make things right with the people she has hurt.”
Shah was given a 78-month sentence in January. She and Stuart Smith, her assistant and co-star on RHOSLC, had been found guilty of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in a telemarketing scheme and conspiracy to launder money.
Shah and Smith were arrested in March 2021 and accused of selling “so-called “business services” related to the victims’ supposed online businesses.” An indictment says that these services included “tax preparation or website design services, even though many of the victims were older and didn’t have computers.” Prosecutors said that thousands of people were tricked by the scheme.
During the trial, prosecutors also said that Shah used the money she made to live a luxurious life. They pointed to her “Shah Ski Chalet” mansion in Park City, Utah, a rented apartment in Midtown Manhattan, a leased Porsche Panamera, tens of thousands of dollars worth of luxury goods, and different cosmetic procedures as examples.
Shah said she wasn’t guilty at first, but she changed her plea to guilty on one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in July of last year. In November 2021, Smith said he was guilty.
Shah’s lawyer gave a statement at the time of her sentencing saying that Shah was sorry for what she had done. The statement said, “Jen Shah feels very bad about the mistakes she has made and is very sorry to the people she has hurt.” “Jen believes in our justice system and knows that people who break the law will be punished, so she thinks this sentence is fair. Jen will pay back what she owes to society, and when she is free again, she promises to pay back what she owes to the people she hurt because of her mistakes.”
The court proceedings were a big part of Shah’s storyline during the second and third seasons of RHOSLC, when the case was still going on.
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