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Well, this is complicated.
Following Jen Shah’s release from prison late last year, she has been avoiding the spotlight.
Now, she’s opening up about it all.
The most important thing is that you are taking almost full responsibility for the crimes that imprisoned her for three years.
‘I made wrong decisions’
The disgraced ex The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City star spoke with People after his release from prison.
He covered many topics, including prison conditions and his own wrongdoings.
“I was wrong,” Shah admitted. “I made wrong decisions.”
He continued: “I should have done things differently. I should have been more diligent.”
Shah stated: “And I am deeply sorry and remorseful for my actions and my part. I take full responsibility.”
For a long time after his arrest, Shah insisted he was innocent, before abruptly changing his statement.
“It is a long and very complex journey that has brought me to this point,” he now explained.
“And without relitigating it,” Shah admitted, “I got involved in the case because I made horrible business decisions and ignored big red flags.”
Shah said: “I allowed the lines between personal friendships and ethical business practices to be blurred. And, in essence, I trusted the wrong people at a very vulnerable time in my life.”
He also alleged: “I thought I was doing the right thing most of the time. I worked for people who ran these companies.”
She says she believed the companies were legitimate.
“What happened was later on, the people I worked with were working with a lot of other people,” Shah described.
“Once the initial fulfillment occurred,” he said, “things happened beyond the point of sale with that customer that I didn’t know about.”
Shah warned: “It can happen if you’re not careful, if you’re not diligent and if you don’t pay attention to the warning signs.”
He then emphasized: “But once you’re in that position you have a responsibility to make sure it doesn’t happen.”
Despite all this insistence that he did not know what he had done, Shah admitted that the events leading up to his arrest had “clouded my judgment.”
“What’s important for me to say, and I need people to know, is that at the same time, my participation in this conspiracy overlapped with my own personal pain,” Shah shared.
“My husband [Sharrieff “Coach” Shah] “And I was separated,” he noted. “We were on the verge of divorce.”
Shah continued: “I was overwhelmed with immense grief over the deaths of my grandmother, my father and my aunt, all in a very short period of time. I was spiraling deeper into my previously diagnosed clinical depression.
At least he emphasized: “I say all of that is not an excuse. Because it’s not like I was making good business decisions and then I woke up one morning and suddenly thought, ‘Oh, I made a bad business decision.'”
Shah added: “This is the totality of everything that I was going through and the overlay of what I was dealing with personally. And I tried to avoid and numb all of that with alcohol and just avoid it.”
“There were people who were injured”
“I trusted the wrong people at a very vulnerable time in my life,” Shah characterized then.
According to her, in July 2022, the prosecution handed over the discovery to her legal team, and that was when she realized how many victims she had allegedly unknowingly racked up.
“It was like a train had hit,” Shah described. “That was the first time I saw all that: the communications, the interviews, the witnesses.”
“I saw for the first time that there were people injured,” Shah described. “That there were real victims as a result of this conspiracy. I had never seen anything with my own eyes. That changed things for me.”
Well, believe it or not, we probably haven’t heard the last of Shah. Many expect her to return to Bravo in some capacity. Among other things, he must pay about $6 million in restitution.
