‘Real Housewives’ Star Jen Shah Reports to Federal Prison Ready to ‘Make Amends’

“Real Housewives of Salt Lake City” star Jen Shah is determined to make “the most of her time in prison.”

The Bravo celebrity surrendered to Federal Prison Camp Bryan, in Texas, on Friday after her sentencing last month for defrauding thousands of people nationwide in a telemarketing scam, many of them older.

Shah starts her six-and-a-half-year prison sentence ready “to make restitution to those whose lives she has impacted,” her attorney, Priya Chaudhry, said in a statement.

“Jen Shah’s resolve to make her victims whole and to turn her life around is unyielding. She is committed to serving her sentence with courage and purpose, fueled by her desire to make amends for the hurt she has caused and to help others in her new community,” Chaudhry said.

The 49-year-old Salt Lake-born Shah was also ordered to forfeit $6,500,000, 30 luxury items (and 78 counterfeit luxury items) and to pay $6,645,251 in restitution. She has to complete five years’ post-release supervision as well.

Prosecutors said in a presentence submission that Shah used profits from her fraud to live a life of luxury that included a nearly 10,000-square-foot mansion with eight fireplaces dubbed “Shah Ski Chalet” in the resort haven of Park City, Utah. The home, they said, is now listed for sale for $7.4 million.

It’s sentencing day for the former “Real Housewives” star. Here’s raw footage of her arriving to the courthouse in midtown Manhattan ahead of Friday’s hearing.

They said she also rented an apartment in midtown Manhattan, leased a Porsche Panamera, bought hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of luxury goods and funded various cosmetic procedures while cheating the Internal Revenue Service of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Prosecutors attacked her behavior after her arrest on March 30, 2021, saying Shah lied to law enforcement in a voluntarily recorded interview before going on a reputation-cleansing public campaign in which she “repeatedly, vehemently, and falsely proclaimed her innocence.”

The government said she also seemed to mock the charges against her by claiming that the “only thing I’m guilty of is being Shah-mazing” and then she profited from it by marketing “Justice for Jen” merchandise after her arrest as she directed others to lie while trying to conceal her conduct from investigators.

In court, Shah said that she was “sincerely remorseful” and added that “reality TV has nothing to do with reality.”

“I am deeply sorry for what I’ve done. My actions hurt innocent people,” she told the courtroom.

While in public and on the reality show, Shah maintained her innocence, prosecutors said that she only pleaded guilty because they had a mountain of evidence against her.

The fraud, authorities said, stretched from 2012 to March 2021 as bogus services were promoted as enabling people to make substantial amounts of money through online businesses. Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Sobelman told the court that Shah was the head of the telemarketing scheme that sold non-existent services, specifically targeting older individuals, and then fought their efforts to get refunds.

“Shah worked hard to make as much money for herself at the expense of vulnerable people,” prosecutors stated.

Meanwhile, defense attorneys minimized Shah’s role in the fraud in their presentence submission to the judge, saying there were “many, many people” involved in the long-lasting telemarketing scheme that led so many individuals to buy worthless services from companies in which Shah was involved.

They wrote that the fraud was “a mistake that has not only ruined her own life, but has broken her heart as she has watched the damage that her actions have caused.”

It was carried out, the lawyers said, “as part of an industry operating with a fine line between what is legal and illegal.”

“Ms. Shah was involved in both the legitimate and fraudulent sides of this industry,” her lawyers said.

Noting that one individual already sentenced in the fraud received more than seven years in prison, the lawyers said Shah wasn’t like codefendants who “are essentially career conmen; people who have spent their lives hopping from scheme to scheme; professional fraudsters without an honest dollar to their names.”

They added: “Before she committed these acts, Ms. Shah’s entire life, for more than four decades, was marked by hard, honest work, respectable achievement, and a hard-earned reputation for true generosity.”

“Now is the time to project humility” James Leonard Jr. told Derek Zagami on RealiTea with Derek Z.

‘Real Housewives’ Drama

Shah has been one of the principal stars of the newest iteration of “Real Housewives,” which debuted in late 2020.

During a reunion special in early 2020, Shah tried to explain what exactly she did for a living, after some of her friends said they didn’t even understand it themselves.

“My background is in direct response marketing for about 20 years, so our company does advertising. We have a platform that helps people acquire customers, so when you’re shopping online or on the internet, and something pops, we have the algorithm behind why you’re getting served that ad,” Shah said, according to a Bravo recap of the show.

Her “Real Housewives” bio described Shah as “queen of her house and her businesses as the CEO of three marketing companies.”

Disclosure: “Real Housewives of Salt Lake City” airs on Bravo, which like WNBC is a unit of NBC Universal.