Jen Shah says she takes full responsibility, but says she trusted the wrong people during a vulnerable time of her life

Former Real Housewives of Salt Lake City star Jen Shah is speaking out after serving 2 and a half years in prison. “I was wrong,” she told PEOPLE. “I made wrong decisions. I should have done things differently. I should have been more diligent. And I’m deeply remorseful and sorry for my actions and for my part. I take full responsibility.”

In her statement to PEOPLE, Jen says she takes full responsibility, but goes on to defer blame by saying she “trusted the wrong people,” ignored “red flags,” and was working under people who ran the fraudulent companies. She maintains that she thought she was doing the right thing for the “majority of the time.”

“It’s a long and a very complex journey that brought me to this point. And without re-litigating it, I became involved in the case because I made horrible business decisions and I disregarded huge red flags. I allowed the lines to be blurred between personal friendships and ethical business practices. And in essence, I trusted the wrong people at a very vulnerable time in my life.”

“I thought I was doing the right thing for the majority of the time. I was working under people who were running these companies.”

After her March 2021 arrest and guilty plea to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, Shah was sentenced for her role in a nationwide telemarketing fraud scheme. She served two years and nine months at a federal prison camp in Bryan, Texas, before being released in December 2025 to finish her sentence in home confinement.

Federal prosecutors described Shah as a key figure in a telemarketing operation that allegedly ran from around 2012 to 2021, targeting thousands of victims across the country. Many of those affected were older or financially vulnerable individuals who were sold so-called business services related to online ventures—services that, according to prosecutors, often provided little to no real value.

Central to the scheme were “lead lists,” which contained contact information for potential customers. Prosecutors said these lists were bought, sold, and repeatedly reused among telemarketing teams. Shah was accused of helping generate and distribute these leads, which were then used to repeatedly contact individuals and pressure them into buying additional services.

They also alleged that Shah played a role in directing how the leads were used, including deciding which sales teams could access them, what products were marketed, and how much victims were charged.

To hide the operation, prosecutors claimed that Shah and others used encrypted messaging platforms, funneled money through offshore accounts, and structured transactions to avoid detection.

Victim impact statements submitted in court described severe consequences, including financial loss, emotional distress, and lasting hardship.

Jen says she thought that the companies were fulfilling their promises to the customers. “What happened was down the line, people that I worked with were working with a lot of other people,” she says. “Once that initial fulfillment was happening, things were happening beyond the point of sale with that customer that I didn’t know about.”

She says her responsibility lies in not noticing that the companies and people she was working for were not fulfilling their promises or operating legitimately.

Jen also maintains that personal problems “clouded her judgment,” like a separation from her husband, losing her grandmother, father, and aunt around the same time, having undiagnosed clinical depression, and numbing her pain with alcohol to avoid it.

“I trusted the wrong people at a very vulnerable time in my life,” she says.

Jen says she only gained perspective on her own wrongdoing after she had to face a mountain of evidence in July 2022, including testimonies from people who had been devastated. “I saw for the first time that there were people who were hurt,” Jen says. “That there were actual victims as a result of this conspiracy. I had never seen anything with my own eyes. That changed things for me.”