Jen Shah has spoken publicly for the first time since being released from prison late last year.
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After serving nearly three years in prison for conspiracy to commit wire fraud, the former Real Housewives of Salt Lake City star is taking responsibility for her wrongdoing.
“I was wrong,” she admitted to PEOPLE in a lengthy interview this week. “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.”
Shah was arrested in March 2021, later pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud. The reality star was sentenced to prison for her role in a years-long telemarketing scheme that the government said defrauded innocent people across the country. According to federal prosecutors, Shah was a central figure in the operation through the sale of so-called business services tied to online ventures. Those services, prosecutors said, often delivered little or no value.
She ended up serving two years and nine months at a federal prison camp in Bryan, Texas, before being released in December 2025. She’s serving the remainder of her sentence under home confinement.
They claimed Shah played an active role in the scheme, but the former Real Housewife says her understanding of what was happening during that time evolved as it went on.
“I became involved in the case because I made horrible business decisions and I disregarded huge red flags,” she told the outlet. “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,” Jen added.
Shah went on to mention the external factors happening in the years leading up to her arrest that “clouded [her] judgement,” including problems in her marriage.
“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,” Shah says. “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.”
The Salt Lake City alum continued,
“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.”
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