Nearly four months after being released from prison following a fraud conviction, Jen Shah accepted full responsibility for her crimes.
“I was wrong. I made the wrong decision. I should have done things differently,” the “Real Housewives of Salt Lake City” alum told People magazine in her first post-prison interview, published Wednesday.
“I should have been more diligent and I deeply regret and am sorry for my actions and my role. I take full responsibility,” she added.
Shah pleaded guilty in 2022 to defrauding thousands of people, including the elderly and vulnerable, through a nationwide telemarketing scheme.
But the former Bravo star, 52, claimed she “ignored red flags” when entering a business she initially thought was legal.
“It’s been a long and very complicated road that led me to this point, and the reason I ended up in this case without re-litigating is because I made terrible business decisions and ignored major red flags,” she told the outlet.
“I allowed the lines between personal friendships and ethical business practices to become blurred, and in essence, I trusted the wrong people at a very vulnerable time in my life,” Shah added.
“Most of the time I thought I was doing the right thing. I worked for the people who were running these companies.”
Shah claimed that he believed the companies he worked for were actually serving customers.
“What happened was that the people I was working with were working with a lot of other people,” she told People magazine.
“After the initial fulfillment happened, beyond the point of sale with that customer, there were things going on that I didn’t know about,” the former reality star claimed.
At the time of her arrest, Jen said she was dealing with “personal pain” that was clouding her judgment, including a separation from her husband, Sharif Shah.
“We were on the verge of divorce. The deaths of my grandmother, father, and aunt within a short period of time left me with immense grief. The symptoms of depression I had previously been diagnosed with deepened,” she said.
“And the reason I say all this is not an excuse, because I wasn’t making good business decisions. And then I wake up one morning and all of a sudden I’m like, ‘Oh, I made a bad business decision,'” she added.
“It’s a totality of everything that was going on and an overlap of what I was dealing with personally. And I avoided all that with alcohol, tried to numb it and just avoid it. I trusted the wrong people at a very vulnerable time in my life.”
In January 2023, Jen was sentenced to six and a half years in prison for the crime. She turned herself in to prison the next month.
The mother of two was released in December 2025 after serving three years at a federal prison in Bryan, Texas, after her sentence was commuted multiple times.
ABC’s “Nightline” captured footage of the emotional moment Jen was reunited with her husband and their two sons, Shareef Jr., 32, and Omar, 23.
Speaking about her time in prison, Jen said the facility “took my breath away” when she first entered.
“I hear people say this is ‘Camp Cupcake,’ but it’s not. It’s a prison. I just thought, ‘This is not where I’m going to be every day,'” she told People magazine.
Jen is now back in Utah with her family and is working to make amends for her crimes, including paying more than $6.5 million in restitution.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I accept the responsibility and am on a mission to make sure people get paid.”
