Jen Shah Breaks Silence After Prison Release For Telemarketing Scheme, Says She 'Made Wrong Decisions,' Faced Secret Separation, & More!

Jen Shah is addressing her crimes four months after getting out of prison.

As you know, The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City alum was arrested in March 2021 — a shocking moment caught on camera during Season 2 of the popular show! Prosecutors said Jen ran a telemarketing scheme from around 2012 to 2021, targeting thousands of victims across the country, many of whom were older or financially vulnerable. She vehemently denied the allegations for a full year. However, Jen later ended up pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and was sentenced to 6.5 years in prison.

After serving two years and nine months, the 52-year-old reality star was released in December 2025 to finish the remainder of her sentence under home confinement. Jen is now taking some responsibility for her actions while speaking out for the first time since her release.

In an interview with People on Wednesday, the Bravo personality admitted she “was wrong.” She added:

“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.”

According to prosecutors, Jen was the central figure of the scam, as she helped generate and sell “lead lists,” which were then used to repeatedly contact individuals and pressure them into buying so-called business services that had little to no value. They alleged she had an active role in how those leads were used, including determining which sales teams accessed them, what products were offered, and how much the victims got charged. Additionally, prosecutors claimed Jen and her co-conspirators concealed the operation through the use of encrypted messaging platforms, routing money through offshore accounts, and structuring transactions to avoid detection.

Jen still insists she didn’t fully know she was participating in a telemarketing scheme, though! She feels she “trusted the wrong people” during a tough time in her life:

“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.”

According to Jen, she thought she “was doing the right thing for the majority of the time” and “was working under people who were running these companies.” She believed the companies she worked with were operating legitimately, specifically with “fulfillment” — meaning delivering services to customers:

“What happened was down the line, people that I worked with were working with a lot of other people. Once that initial fulfillment was happening, things were happening beyond the point of sale with that customer that I didn’t know about.”

Hmm. Regardless of whether she was clueless or not, she still acknowledges she was in the wrong:

“It can happen if you’re not careful, if you’re not being diligent and you’re not paying attention to the red flags. But you have a responsibility once you’re in that position to make sure it doesn’t.”

Jen also shared that she was dealing with several personal struggles before her arrest that “clouded my judgement,” including a secret separation from her husband, Sharrieff Shah, multiple family deaths, and depression:

“What’s important for me to say — and I need to let people know — was at the same time, my involvement in this conspiracy overlapped with my own personal pain. My husband [Sharrieff “Coach” Shah] and I were separated. We were on the verge of a divorce. I was overwhelmed with immense grief from the death of my grandmother, my father and my aunt, all in a very short period of time. I was spiraling deeper into my previously diagnosed clinical depression.”

All of that, Jen alleged, led her to trust the wrong people:

“And the reason I say all that is not as an excuse. Because it’s not like I was making good business decisions and then I woke up one morning and all of a sudden it’s like, ‘Oh, I made a bad business decision.’ This is the totality of everything that was going on and the overlapping of what I was dealing with personally. And I tried to avoid and numb all of that with alcohol and just avoid it. I trusted the wrong people at a very vulnerable time in my life.”

Jen didn’t realize what she had done until July 2022, when her legal team received boatloads of evidence from prosecutors weeks before the trial:

“It was like a train hit. That was the first time I saw all of it — the communications, the interviews, the witnesses. I saw for the first time that there were people who were hurt. 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.”

She decided to plead guilty days later, and we all know what happened from there. She went to a federal prison camp in Bryan, Texas, which she said “took my breath away” during her first day behind bars, making her think, “This cannot be where I’m going to be every day.” And now that Jen is a free woman again, she is determined to right her wrongs — starting by paying back the $6.6 million in restitution she owes:

“I’m sorry. I’m accepting responsibility, and I’ve made it my mission to make sure that people are paid back.”

She also hopes everyone will give her “grace” to move forward:

“I understand that people have their opinions based on what they saw. But I would hope they would give me the grace to at least hear me and understand that I’m more than just the headline.”

We’ll see if people are willing to forgive and give that grace. One thing we do know is that she will not be welcomed back to Bravo! Andy Cohen made it clear that her time on RHOSLC is over! Watch her entire interview (below):