The Unreal Housewife: Ep. 5, You Have a Right to Shut the Fu*& Up

Previously on Queen of the Cohn.

Other companies would start calling and they'd say, oh, well, you know, like you're going to need this to add to your business if you want to get it like on the front page, like we can help with say the technical aspect one was like five thousand dollars. I was like, well, I just spent like ten thousand dollars during who we need to spend more? But still thinking, yeah, this is part of the business, this is what I need to do. I went ahead, of course and did it.

Jenshaw's telemarketing scammers extract their toll on thousands of unsuspecting victims across the country.

And that's what's scary because it could happen to anybody job if it really can, it could happen to anyone in the world.

And as the FEDS build their case against the outspoken housewife of Salt Lake City.

The defendant primarily acted as a lead broker responsible for selling victim information to other sales floors.

Jenshaw proclaims her innocence to know, but text messages recovered from her cell phone once jen realizes the Feds are onto her, tell a decidedly different story.

Text like, holy fucking shit, delete the salescripts from the Google drive.

I'm Jonathan Walton and this is Queen of the con The Unreal House episode five. You have the right to shut the fuck up.

We know that the Feds, who were looking at this long before the public knew there was going to be an indictment for Jenshaw, they obviously watched the show.

Former prosecutor and current host of The Emily Show podcast, Emily D.

Baker, I might not have ever left prosecute if the Feds had been like Emily, we need someone who just understands reality TV to help us just navigate. If my job as a prosecutor was just to watch reality TV and be like, this seems shady that's going on there, I might not have left because it's it's so funny how many of these cases are now ending up in federal prosecutions.

And Jen's federal prosecution makes front page news across the country.

Escalating accusations against Real housewife Jen Shops.

Well, now this real housewife faces some very real federal charges that could land her in prison for a long time.

Accused of being an alleged senior participant in a nearly decade long telemarketing scamp.

And after her spectacular arrest while shooting The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City for Bravo, We're looking for Jen Saw.

She just left.

Wow, have like swat team and stuff?

What about her?

On March thirtieth, Genshaw is charged by the FEDS with one count of conspiracy to commit wirefraud victimizing ten or more people over the age of fifty five, a charge that carries a maximum sentence of thirty years in prison. She's also charged with one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, which carries a maximum sentence of twenty years

It seems that she had a branch of her business based in New York. Seem like she had one of these sales floors in New York. It's very interesting to me to see there was a period of her life where she and her husband were living separately. I want to know what was going on during this period.

So, based on public records and court filings, Jainshaw's relationship with Coach went through some rocky territory because in twenty seventeen, after twenty three years of marriage, Genshaw suddenly Opson moves to New York City to start her own scammy telemarketing business called Mastery Pro Group. And according to a filing by her own legal team, it's this stint in New York that caused their client to get wrapped up in all this craziness her attorney's right to the court.

It's as if the Genshaw who spent time in New York with a group of dead beat criminals and fraudsters, and the Genshaw in Salt Lake City are two different people with little in common. One was a perfect daughter, mother, and wife in Salt Lake City. Then there was the

She really did blame it on the bad crowd she fell in with in New York. But when you're married and have two kids, just upping and moving across the country to live there and being like and then I fell in with a bad crowd, I just don't believe it. You had to have a reason to go. You had to have a purpose to be there. I think they knew they were going to run the business there. Why they chose New York, I don't know. That's where the

Does Emily's right. The Southern District of New York is unrivaled in the amount of fraud cases they prosecute, and they have a ninety five percent conviction rate. But Jen's legal team goes on to squarely lay the blame for everything Jen is accused of doing on her duplicitous New York cohorts, writing in a memo to the judge.

Mishaw originally started to work in telemarketing on the legitimate and legal side of the business, and was slowly drawn into working with a group of men who were committing fraud. These men recognize in Mishaw a talent for organization, hard work, and relationship building, and they took advantage of her skills to further their own criminal name.

Yes, but that's not true at all, because, according to court records and the Federal Trade Commission, Jenshaw's involvement with these fraudulent telemarketing schemes dates all the way back to two thousand and six, and her time at Prosper Inc. More than a decade before she ever opened her own bogus telemarketing company in New York City. So Jenshaw's attorneys are wrong. I have spent literally days reading over hundreds and hundreds of these court documents and these filings in

Well, that's kind of their job with a client who is saying, I have the money, I'm paying you, I'm innocent, let's go. And of course we don't know what Jenshaw said to her attorneys, but we can imagine based on what she has said publicly, based on how forceful her own convictions were.

And boy, who are her convictions forceful? From Bravo's Housewives Reunion.

Show, I'm fighting this.

I am innocent to Adam Nule's up in Adam podcast.

I'm innocent. I'm not the only one that's gone through this. You know, there are nearly ten thousand people a year that are wrongly accused and convicted of a crime they did not commit.

In fact, for more than an entire year, as the case against Jenshaw makes its way through the criminal justice system. In court appearance after court appearance after court appearance, Jenshaw is steadfast and adamant that she did nothing wrong, and even goes so far as to publicly imply that the charges against her are racially motivated.

It's easy for people to accuse a person of color, a female person of color here in America today. You can look at the statistics.

We see her throwing out all these other tactics of like, well, oh, I'm a woman, I'm a woman of color, I'm a woman of religion.

That's Zach Peter, host of the No Filter with Zach Peter podcast.

I think she thinks that she's the smartest person ever. You know, she threw out every single card she could possibly put on the table to try and get any sort of, you know, sliver of you know, empathy, remorse, any sort of slack that she could get from people.

And then she leaned into biases and prejudices that exist for people and made them question themselves, are you being persecuted because you're a woman. Are you being persecuted because you're a person of color? Are you being treated unfairly? And she leaned into all of that to make those around her question themselves if they questioned her, because then

Yeah, that was something. Jenshaw's mother reportedly cashed out her retirement for more than a million dollars by some accounts, to help Gen pay for her legal defense.

Whatever she needs to do to survive is what she is going to do. And that's what we saw happen in this case, and it's what we see happen in so many fraud cases. They will survive at the cost of everyone around them, and it does not matter what the relationship is.

And keep in mind, lawyers in federal criminal cases cost way more than lawyers for local city or state cases.

Because the weight of the government evidence oftentimes is overwhelming. In these cases, it's a lot of information. Yes, the defense has a lot to catch up on, but that's kind of the difficulty of a federal prosecution and the difficulty of federal criminal defense.

And when prosecutors turn over discovery to the defense, mean all the evidence they have against Jenshaw. It consists of two hundred and twenty seven gigabytes of data and more than one point three million documents.

The one point three million documents are independent documents but some of those documents have thousands and one of them hundreds of thousands of pages. The one point three million documents are independent documents, but some of those documents have thousands and one of them hundreds of thousands of pages.

So to say, going into this Jenshaw and her legal team are at an immeasurable disadvantage is a gross understatement.

And of course, as we know from earlier discussions and earlier documentation, Jenshaw and her first assistant Steward Smith, are coming into this prosecution towards the end of this. What we learn in these emotions is that this is the third set of cases with regard to this overall scheme. There have been two other cases that have gone to trial. There have been tens or twenty plus defendants that have already pled or been convicted in these schemes.

And that's actually the reason Jenshaw and her assistant Stuart Smith ultimately get caught here. Federal prosecutors brought several criminal cases against other telemarketing scammers tangentially involved with Jenshaw years earlier.

And actually it tied into another investigation that we had which is even spawning on to additional investigations.

That's Ricky Patel. He's the Homeland Security special agent overseeing the Jenshaw case.

This happens so often, unfortunately, that there's so many tentacles that this ties into right one corporation or company if you want to call them actual companies one, I'll use the word froster. One froster is and many times tied to another frauster who's then tied to another froster, which continues this whole perpetual problem.

It sounds like from an investigative point of view, it's like a game of whack a mole. You get one, another one pops up, then another one pops up, then another one pops up.

That's a great way to put it right. And the reason that is is it's so lucrative because they're so good at what they do. We talk to victims who are shamed at times for feeling like I can't believe I fell victim to this. Where these people are professional connartists.

This is a rampant problem, and that, believe it or not, gives the government a weird advantage here because several of the many lower level telemarketing scammers who get busted by the Feds agree to lead them to the ring leaders of the operation, ring leaders like Jenshaw in exchange for the possibility of lighter sentences or in some cases, probation.

So Jenshaw is coming right at the tail end as this is running up for trial, and her legal team has quite a mountain to climb with the evidence turned over by the government. The government is in a little bit of an easier position because they've been living with these cases for years now.

But what jen Shaw and her legal team lack in preparation they more than make up for with unadulterated HUTSPA because they file multiple motions again and again and again asking a federal judge to dismiss the criminal case against jen for reasons that are just ludicrous for starters, Jen writes this insane declaration to the.

Court in twenty seventeen, I was the victim of multiple crimes by an individual known to me who stole money from me, violated an order of protection issued by a judge, and assaulted me, causing my physical injuries.

Okay, so, according to jen some guy in New York robbed and assaulted her back in twenty seventeen when she was living there away from her husband. Was she dating this guy or in business with him, or was he just some rando on the street, Jen doesn't say. She goes on to write.

On March thirtieth, twenty twenty one, I was arrested in Salt Lake City, Utah, while on the road on my way to recording an episode of Real Housewives of Salt Lake City for the Bravo Network.

But this is a lie, because now we all know. Jen was actually arrested after fleeing the Real Housewives set, not driving to it. After she gets that mysterious phone call and tells everyone another lie, that she has to go her husband is in the hospital with internal bleeding. Anyway, Jen continues writing.

Shortly before I was stopped, an unknown person called me and said that my husband had told this unknown person to call me. The unknown caller told me to head home. I immediately tried calling my husband, but he did not pick up even after I called more than once. I began to worry for him. Soon after, I received another phone call, this time from a nine to one seven number. The caller explained that his name was Detective Christopher Bastows and that he was with the New York Police Department.

Individual one is the guy who she claims rob then assaulted her in New York back in twenty seventeen.

So Jenshaw is arguing that because she had this interaction with this person in New York, and because she has a restraining order against this person, she was very confused when she got called by a detective in New York while she was driving in Utah.

Jen continues, Detective Bastos did not tell me why he was calling, but instead told me to pull over, and minutes later he pulled up in a car with other agents. I was walked to the back of the car, placed in handcuffed, and told that they had a warrant for my arrest. I was at this point very confused and emotionally off balanced from the strange series of events, and thought I may have been the victim of false identification.

Okay, so here she's admitting she knew she was quote apparently arrested, which makes where she's going with the rest of her fragmented diatribe incongruous.

Detective Bassos drove me to the ice headquarters and brought me to a break room with a circular table in three chairs. Detective Bassos and an HSI agent handcuffed me to one of the chairs and then joined me at the table. Detective Bassos read me miranda warnings from a printed paper He also handed me a copy to sign. As I read along, she's.

Talking about her Miranda rights. You know the whole You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law routine.

Although I heard the words Detective Bastos read clearly, my contact lenses, which were in my eyes, were dry, and I did not have my reading glasses, so my vision was blurry and I was unable to read the paper in front of me.

She's pulling out all the stops.

Even while being read my rights. I did not fully understand what was going on after I signed the waiver, even though I could not read it. But before Detective Bassos began his questioning, I informed the detective that my contact lenses were blurry. Detective Bastos and the agent found my contact solution in my bag, uncuffed me, and allowed me to fix the contact. They then read cuffed one of my hands of the chair and began the interrogation.

So she's sitting in ice headquarters, handcuffed to a chair, being questioned by the NYPD and by federal agents and she doesn't think it's being recorded. Maybe she's never seen Dateline or watched the local news or seen that show Cops. Anyway, Jen continues, writing, I did.

Not know the purpose of the conversation or what, if anything, I was being charged with until close to the end of the one hour and twenty minute interrogation.

So at this point Jen's attorneys actually try and use this entire false flag fiasco that Jen lays out in her declaration to the judge as grounds to dismiss the criminal case against her outright and just so you know, not giving Miranda rights to a perpetrator in custody is enough to actually get a criminal case dismissed. But reading the defense's motion out loud, as Emily D. Baker does on her YouTube show, it kind of sounds like an snlscatch.

The defense says, quote Miss Shaw was consumed with a desire to know why she was placed in handcuffs and apparently arrested. She could not handle the officers not answering

Emily D. Baker is reading now from Genshaw's clown car crazy motion to dismiss. So this is what the defense motion says.

Although she heard the words, Detective Bastos read Misshaw's contact lenses which were in her eyes. Thank you for the clarification that we're not talking about contact lenses laying on a table. Mischelle'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. Mischaw did not know what was going on.

And as Real Housewives fans know all too well, Jen Shaw is unable to shut the fuck up. She talks to investigators for more than an hour.

At that point in time, it's pretty obvious as to what's happening.

Right, Homeland Security Special Agent Ricky Patel.

We were there and my agents undoubtedly discussed what was happening, and just like we deal with anyone else, there was no difference in, Hey, you're the rest for whatever charges, and here's what's going on. And then of course the whole process that we have place, it's pretty ironed out as far as getting mirandized and you know, reading your rights to you and the processing situation. So for her to not know that she was under arrest, that doesn't really jive well with me.

In the end, the judge in Genshaw's case denies her attorney's preposterous motion to dismiss, and then suddenly, out of nowhere, Genshaw's entire legal team quits in a huff, writing to the court.

I respectfully submit this declaration is support of my letter motion for my firm to withdraw as counsel in this matter.

If you don't tell your attorneys the entire truth at the beginning, you are never going to get the result that you anticipate, and you're going to spend a lot of money doing it, and now we know from other filings that her attorneys haven't entirely been paid, which when you are taking on a fraud defendant, you need to make sure, especially after the government has seized assets, that you are getting paid by someone, whether it is the

How does that even happen? I thought attorneys work, you have to give them a.

You generally have to give them a retainer. But I don't know how much of a retainer they required. I don't know if the attorneys were persuaded by Jen's personality or if they saw a great way to elevate their own profile. This is a high profile case. This is going to have our name being covered because we've covered all of these motions, and if you've seen the letter filings, they have the law firms logo very boldly across the top. They know that these things are going to be discussed.

I'm gonna try that with my landlord. I'm gonna tag you on Instagram.

Don't you know who I am? It should be enough to be in my presence. It's so funny how frequently this happens.

It's August twenty twenty one now, and Jen Shaw manages to hire a new law firm to represent her in this sprawling telemarketing fraud case. Presumably she's paid them a hefty retainer. She still swears she's innocent and out of the gate, her new attorneys pull a move so bold and so reckless to get the case dismissed that it strikes fear and terror in the hearts and minds of

Worked as a journalist for almost thirty years. If sources are under the impression that I and other journalists could be forced to produce all of our work product about our conversations at any time, it would be very difficult, if not to effectively report about such matters.

If a federal judge grants this motion, it could open a Pandora's box. It's not how it's supposed to work, and there are protections in place. Four journalists and that is why everyone's eyes are on this motion.

Next time on Queen of the con All the cell phones I found in her closet. She had a lot of cell phones, yes, like how many? Like at least maybe ten? And boy, oh boy, those cell phones tell prosecutors everything they need to know about Jenshaw and her unlikely alter ego.

Her name was Becky White.

She was Becky with the good hair. There's good hair.

Because she was stealing it from all these elderly people.

Portions of public statements from court records were dramatized verbatim in this appen. Queen of the Khan The Unreal Housewife is a production of AYR Media and iHeartMedia, hosted by me Jonathan Walton. Executive producers Jonathan Walton for Jonathan Walton Productions and Elisa Rosen for AYR Media. Written by Jonathan Walton, Segment producer Gregory Harvey, Senior Associate producer Jill Pshesnik, Coordinator Melena Krowlevski. Sound design by Tim Mulhern, Edited and mixed