The Justice Department is requesting a decade in prison for "The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City" star Jen Shah ahead of her Jan. 6 sentencing for running a nationwide telemarketing scheme targeting seniors, according to newly-filed court documents that also feature previously unreported victim impact statements from some of the elderly people she defrauded.
The Dec. 23 filing calls Shah, 49, "the most culpable person charged in this case," and "an integral leader of a wide-ranging, nationwide telemarketing fraud scheme that victimized thousands of innocent people."
"At the defendant’s direction, victims were defrauded over and over again until they had nothing left," Damian Williams, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, wrote. "She and her co-conspirators persisted in their conduct until the victims’ bank accounts were empty, their credit cards were at their limits, and there was nothing more to take."
Shah’s lawyers and representative did not immediately return requests for comment. Shah's lawyers have requested a three-year prison sentence, court documents show.
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Shah and her “first assistant,” Stuart Smith, were accused in March 2021 of committing wire fraud and money laundering in a scheme in which they “generated and sold ‘lead lists’ of innocent individuals for other members of their scheme to repeatedly scam” from 2012 through 2021, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
