The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City's Jen Shah arrested on fraud charges

(Image credit: AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

published 31 March 2021

The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City star Jen Shah was arrested Tuesday in Utah on federal fraud charges, with prosecutors accusing her of running a telemarketing scheme for nearly a decade that targeted "hundreds" of victims, many of them 55 and older, across the United States.

Shah, 47, and her assistant, 43-year-old Stuart Smith, are facing charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in connection with telemarketing and conspiracy to commit money laundering. The indictment against them claims that their scam began in 2012 and ended this month, with the defendants selling services like website design and tax preparation to "hundreds of victims ... many of whom were over age 55" and didn't own computers. They then allegedly made lists of their victims and sold them to other participants in the fraud, receiving a "share of the fraudulent revenue" that was earned.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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