The Reality TV “Rodeo” continues, and the Bravo TV “The Real Housewives” series, has had more than its share of unethical rodeo clowns. I have no idea why people watch this stuff, but that is a value judgment. However, when the jokes stop and unethical behavior begins, my attention turns to what motivates me to reach out to people.
“The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City,” is another of the formulaic shows of the series. The supposed star of that series is a woman named Jen Shah. She is 47, and could face up to 30 years in jail.
The Formula
Part of the formula of the successful series is to find women who are emotional lightening rods; people we just naturally love to hate or to find obnoxious. They may be “housewives” as the show’s title suggests, but they are hardly docile Betty Crocker types spending their days baking apple pies. The shows survive on arguments, confrontation, name-calling and the occasional water throwing or hair pulling. Jen Shah was a master of ostentation.
Shah and her personal assistant Stuart Smith loved to obnoxiously throw their success and lifestyle in everyone’s faces on the show. They swam in money, it seemed, a lifestyle guaranteed to make people jealous. But no one could quite figure out how she and her partner made their fortune.
It all came to a head in March 2021, when Homeland Security leveled charges against her in Southern US District Court of New York on charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
According to the prosecution, “they allegedly built their opulent lifestyle at the expense of vulnerable, often elderly, working-class people.”
The Reality TV star with the gowns and fancy cars, and her partner, were running a telemarketing scam in six states: New York, New Jersey, Arizona, Nevada and Utah. The scam was to steal from the elderly, “encouraging them to invest in dubious online projects and selling bogus business services from 2012.”
According to court documents they pushed tax preparation, web design services and online coaching, although many of them lacked computers.
The Scam Factory
Shah and Smith, along with others in the “boiler room,” found confused, older people who they had scammed in the past. Shah had lists of elderly victims from Utah and Nevada and fed them to the telemarketers. They got a cut of the funds stolen from the poor. They were motivated by nothing more than greed. Jen Shah has been referred to as a top-tier mastermind.
Though more than a dozen telemarketing fraudsters were involved in the scheme across the country, comparing lists of people they had fleeced in the past, it was Shah who participated at the highest level.
Who are Our Heroes?
Jen Shah may be a scam artist who lived off of the savings of the poor and elderly, but she had plenty of people who looked up to her. Prior to courts shutting down her operation, no one knew what she did for a living, how she accumulated her wealth or indeed, how she was selected for the show.
In accepting the illusion, viewers only accepted how she interacted with the other so-called housewives on the show.
In case no one quite understands this concept, the show (actually, the franchise) does not exist for any other reason than to sell commercial advertising and other endorsement deals. The contentiousness and the often faked “drama” of the show is to keep the viewers engaged. The show is carefully staged and edited.
Jen Shah and her co-conspirators, saw the opportunity to fleece the elderly. They were confused souls; undoubtedly lonely and certainly vulnerable. The Reality TV star whom some people loved, saw the victims as nothing more than cash cows. Her need was for money and she rationalized, in some way, that she was entitled to whatever they had.
Unethical behavior can manifest itself in many ways; as a common thief or a woman who wears gorgeous clothes and expensive jewelry. Reality TV or not, it is best to judge people as ethical or unethical and not by the cars they drive.
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