Jen Shah has been classified as an alleged “senior participant” in the telemarketing scheme that led to her arrest earlier this year.
According to a new court document obtained by PEOPLE, the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City star and her assistant Stuart Smith are both “Tier A” defendants in the ongoing fraud case. The document claims Shah and Smith were “responsible for orchestrating the broader scheme” and “supplying the leads that sustained” the telemarketing companies.
“In particular, Jennifer Shah and Stuart Smith obtained leads directly from lead sources and provided them to, among others, coaching sales floors operated in Utah and Nevada by [other defendants],” the document alleges, as first reported by TMZ.
Four other defendants are also listed as Tier A in the document, while 23 others are classified in Tiers 1 through 4. Another Tier A defendant has already been sentenced to 78 months in prison, while some others in the lower tiers have received anywhere from 366 days to 87 months.
The document notes that Tier A was added to the classification list to reflect the defendants' alleged “greater culpability,” and claims “many” of the senior participants “continued to participate in the Scheme after they became aware of the criminal charges.”
In a statement to PEOPLE, Shah's lawyer Priya Chaudhry says, “After investigating for nearly ten years, and a 12-day trial in which Ms. Shah was never mentioned, the Government suddenly lobs this absurd claim. This is just their latest made-up allegation, and like all others, totally unsupported by evidence. The reality is — she is totally innocent.”
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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