‘Real Housewives’ star Jen Shah to face sentencing for telemarketing fraud scheme

Disgraced “Real Housewives of Salt Lake City” star Jen Shah will be sentenced by a federal judge in Manhattan Friday for running a yearslong telemarketing scam that targeted elderly Americans. 

Federal prosecutors want Judge Sidney Stein to hand the fallen reality TV star up to 10 years in prison over the scheme, arguing she helped siphon the life savings of her victims for nearly a decade. 

“At the defendant’s direction, victims were defrauded over and over again until they had nothing left,” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing submission. 

“[Shah] 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,” they wrote.

Shah, 49, pleaded guilty in July to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud for providing “leads” about who to target to a crew of telemarketers that duped victims into investing in dubious online projects. 

The scammers offered their marks bogus business services beginning in 2012 — then pocketed the cash and provided the victims “products” and “services” that were of little or no value. 

At her plea hearing, Shah told Judge Stein she knew the services being offered were basically worthless. 

“From 2012 to March 2021 in the Southern District of New York and elsewhere, I agreed with others to commit wire fraud,” Shah said. 

“I did this by knowingly providing customer names to people who were marketing business services that had little or no value,” she added. 

Shah’s defense attorneys argued in their own sentencing submission that she should serve three years in prison, arguing that while she played a significant role in the fraud, she was not a leader of the operation. 

“Ms. Shah’s piece of the puzzle, though important, was not enough to carry out this fraud without these other crucial pieces controlled and directed by experienced criminals (who were not Ms. Shah),” her attorneys wrote. 

“There is neither reason nor evidence to place Ms. Shah at the ‘Godfather’ or ‘Kingpin’ level of this fraud,” they added.