I watched Jen Shah’s exclusive interview with People magazine, and boy, oh boy! What a mess!
As a quick refresher, Jen Shah was a member of “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City.” She was arrested on March 30, 2021, on charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering in a telemarketing scheme. She claimed innocence all through Season 3 of “RHOSLC,” then shocked viewers and her castmates by pleading guilty in 2022. In early 2023, she was sentenced to six and a half years in prison. She ultimately served just under three years and returned home at the end of 2025. She is now under house arrest.
And I guess giving interviews to People magazine is on the list of approved activities for house arrestees, because Wednesday, People released 36 minutes of Shah “breaking her silence.”
Many of the headlines about the interview have read something along the lines of “Jen Shah expresses remorse for her actions” and “Jen Shah admits wrongdoing and apologizes to victims.” And both of those statements are true.
But only technically.
Shah offers a big bowl of word salad in her explanation for why she went to prison. She worked for other people and was not the mastermind, she explains. It was her superiors at other companies that are responsible, she says. She admits she should have done more due diligence, but claims she did not understand why she was being indicted. She pleaded guilty, she explains, because, in her words, if she maintained her innocence, “It just takes one person on the jury to not agree” for her to go to prison for much longer than she would with a guilty plea.
So, even though she believed she was innocent, and still seems to, she pleaded guilty just in case one juror saw the evidence and decided she was guilty. Which is confusing, because if there’s evidence that implies you’re guilty, I think you’re probably guilty. But, she explains that the charge of conspiracy did not require an overt action, and says there were red flags with her co-conspirator — who, by the way, was sentenced to just nine months while she was sentenced to 78 months.
If you read all that and think, “That doesn’t make a lot of sense,” and “That doesn’t sound like she’s taking a lot of accountability,” yes. Exactly.
She does apologize to the victims, and says she’s made it her mission to make sure that people are paid back through restitution. “I’m sorry and I take responsibility,” she says. That apology lasts all of a few seconds.
Then she talks about how terrible it was that the prison she was sent to was … a prison.
I would like to know what Shah thought prison was, because she seems very surprised that the Bryan, Texas, prison camp was not a luxury resort. She describes crying upon arriving and thinking, “This cannot be where I’m going to be everyday.” She cried after seeing her living quarters and surrendering her phone. “I didn’t know how I was going to do this,” she says, I think in an attempt to gain viewers’ sympathy. Which, I don’t know, might work on some people. But not anyone who watched the entire interview. Because she spends the rest of the time talking about how famous she is and how everyone else in the prison was starstruck upon her arrival.
“It was like a BravoCon meet and greet,” she says. “I didn’t know there were so many fans.”
But we should feel sorry for her because as a “high-profile” inmate she had to carry around a pink card and check in with guards every couple of hours. LIKE A PRISONER.
Other hardships Shah endured, according to her, include limited commissary money that she spent primarily on hair spray, hemorrhoid pads and laundry soap to maintain her hair and skin care routines. She was also served too many starches at meals, and had to occasionally monitor bathrooms for cleanliness.
Shah explains she and fellow inmate Elizabeth Holmes — the Theranos founder who was imprisoned for defrauding investors — bonded over their high-profile status. But Shah, emphatically, did not bond with the prison’s other high-profile inmate, Ghislaine Maxwell. Maxwell showed no remorse for conspiring with Jeffrey Epstein to sexually abuse minors, according to Shah. So at least she can recognize when others aren’t owning up to their wrongs to the extent that they should. Physician, heal thyself.
Shah is home now and required to wear an ankle monitor. “I’d be lying if I said there doesn’t feel like there’s a stigma with it,” she says. It doesn’t seem so crazy to me that there’s a stigma to something only criminals are required to wear. Which is how I feel about the tone of the entire interview. It’s a tone that indicates Shah sees herself as a victim, not someone who victimized.
At the interview’s conclusion, she says she hopes people will find it in their hearts to give her a second chance. Which, sure. That is the point of serving a prison sentence, I guess. Getting out and giving it another go. I can find it in my heart to assume Shah did her time, and should be able to live the rest of her life happily with her family after paying back the victims in full.
But I cannot find it in my heart to give Shah a second chance at celebrity and a role on the “RHOSLC” cast, which she seems to be vying for with this interview. Had she shown true remorse and admitted to genuine culpability, not just legal strategy, maybe I could. Had she spent more than 10 seconds talking about the victims whose money she stole instead of using half an hour to describe the perceived harshness of prison and how admired she was while there, maybe.
But she didn’t.
And despite her claims that she’s changed, I saw the exact same person who left “RHOSLC” to enter prison. The person who defrauded thousands of victims, many of them vulnerable and elderly. And I have no room for her on my screen.