Jen Shah is accusing the detective who questioned her following her arrest of using deception to get her to spill and wants her statements thrown out as evidence.
According to court documents obtained by Radar Online, the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City star’s lawyers are moving to dismiss the wire fraud charge against her. The legal team also questions the tactics used by law enforcement following their client being taken into custody.
Shah is asking for all statements she made to police following her March 30 arrest to be suppressed. Jen claims the arresting officer made misrepresentations to her.
Her lawyers say Shah waived her rights when being questioned by Detective Christopher Bastos but only did so because she was in a “vulnerable state.” Bastos works in the Criminal Enterprise Division with the New York Police Department.
“At the time she waived her rights, Ms. Shah was in a very vulnerable emotional state due to the combination of strange phone calls she received the morning of her arrest and her history with a convicted felon who had victimized her in New York,” Shah’s lawyer claims.
He claims this, “caused her will to be overborne easily by Det. Bastos and several affirmative misrepresentations he made in order to secure a waiver of rights.”
On the day of her arrest, Shah was filming the second season of RHOSLC. On her way to the filming, she claims to have received a call from an unknown number who. “said that her husband had told this unknown person to call her. The unknown caller told Ms. Shah that she should return home.”
Shah tried to call her husband, but he did not pick up. She started to freak out before receiving a call from Det. Christopher Bastos of the NYPD. He asked her to pull over and cops surrounded her car.
“Ms. Shah was at this point incredibly confused and emotionally off-balance from the strange series of events, and believed she might have been the victim of a false identification,” her lawyer told the court, according to Radar Online.
The Bravo reality star claims she kept asking where she was going but Bastos wouldn’t provide details. Shah was taken into custody at ICE headquarters.
Shah says Bastos read the Miranda warnings from a printed paper and handed her a copy as well. However, she says while she heard the words Bastos said couldn’t read the paper. Her lawyer says, “Ms. Shah’s contact lenses, which were in her eyes, were dry, and she did not have her reading glasses, so her vision was blurry and she was unable to read the paper in front of her.”
“Even while being read her rights, Ms. Shah did not know what was going on, and still thought it might be a potential misidentification,” he claims. Shah claims to have signed the paper without seeing it. She accuses the Detective used “deception and trickery” to get her to waive her rights.
She wants a hearing on the matter to discuss the government’s tactics. Jen said they failed to provide dates or the alleged crimes or anything substantial in regard to her role in the alleged scheme. Shah is asking the court to order the prosecutors to hand over details immediately.
Otherwise, she claims her lawyers are unable to build a defense. According to court documents obtained by Radar Online, Shah’s lawyers also revealed federal agents executed two warrants for Shah’s cell phone and email.
They claim the Det. Christopher Bastos of the New York Police Department made false statements in the application which helped him get a judge to sign off on it. She says all evidence they recovered from her cell phone and emails should be suppressed.
The news comes after Jen Shah and her assistant, Stuart Smith, were arrested for their alleged roles in a telemarketing scheme that defrauded hundreds of victims throughout the United States on Tuesday, March 30.
Shah and Smith were booked in Salt Lake City on conspiracy to commit wire fraud in connection with telemarketing and conspiracy to commit money laundering charges. They each face a maximum sentence of 30 years for the wire fraud charges and an additional 20 years for the money laundering charges.
“Jennifer Shah, who portrays herself as a wealthy and successful businessperson on ‘reality’ television, and Stuart Smith, who is portrayed as Shah’s ‘first assistant,’ allegedly generated and sold ‘lead lists’ of innocent individuals for other members of their scheme to repeatedly scam,” Manhattan U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss said in a press release on Tuesday, reports the outlet. “In actual reality and as alleged, the so-called business opportunities pushed on the victims by Shah, Smith, and their co-conspirators were just fraudulent schemes, motivated by greed, to steal victims’ money. Now, these defendants face time in prison for their alleged crimes.”
“Shah and Smith flaunted their lavish lifestyle to the public as a symbol of their ‘success,’” HSI Special Agent-in-Charge Peter C. Fitzhugh added. “In reality, they allegedly built their opulent lifestyle at the expense of vulnerable, often elderly, working-class people. As alleged, disturbingly, Shah and Smith objectified their very real human victims as ‘leads’ to be bought and sold, offering their personal information for sale to other members of their fraud ring. Working with our partners at the NYPD and the United States Attorney’s Office, SDNY, and with the assistance of HSI Salt Lake City, HSI New York worked to ensure that Shah and Smith will answer for their alleged crimes. As a result, their new reality may very well turn out differently than they expected.”
According to Us Weekly, New York Police Department Commissioner Dermot Shea went on to thank the “hard work” of the NYPD for the case.
“These individuals allegedly targeted and defrauded hundreds of victims but thanks to the hard work of the NYPD and our law enforcement partners, this illegal scheme was brought to an end,” Shea said on Tuesday. “I congratulate the NYPD detectives, Homeland Security Investigations, and the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York for their hard work in bringing these persons to justice.”
Photo Credit: Bravo Media/NBCUniversal
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