Viewers of Real Housewives of Salt Lake City met Jen Shah when she introduced herself as “Queen B. and MVP.” Little did we know, she was sitting on a throne of lies. Earlier this week, Shah and her first assistant Stuart Smith (who also appears on the show) were arrested on federal charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in connection with telemarketing and conspiracy to commit money laundering, along with several other people.

If I had known Jen Shah was my robocaller, maybe I would have texted back a thumbs-up emoji (which in RHOSLC means, of course, “fuck you”).

Jen and Stuart are recent additions to the case, which was started back in 2019. In newly unsealed court documents from the initial indictment, then-Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman alleged that the defendants “aggressively targeted the elderly and other vulnerable victims throughout the United States by convincing them to invest their money in various businesses, and then scammed those victims again after pushing them deep into debt.”

Berman goes on to write, "these so-called opportunities were just fraudulent schemes to steal victims’ money, and the so-called 'debt relief' only further abused the trust that innocent victims placed in the defendants.”

In The United States V. Jennifer Shah and Stuart Smith, plaintiffs claim that Shah, Smith, and their associates sold elderly individuals services such as tax preparation and website design, regardless of the fact that many victims did not own a computer.