Not long after the freshman season reunion aired, Real Housewives of Salt Lake City star Jen Shah was arrested on fraud and money laundering charges concerning an alleged telemarketing scheme in March. The new season, soon to air on Bravo, is expected to get to the nitty gritty of Shah's side on the legal matter. But what's even more interesting is that Meredith Marks is accused of alerting the feds to Shah’s location prior to her arrest in the teaser trailer for Season 2. Marks is now defending herself against all the speculation.
Real Housewives of Salt Lake City co-stars Whitney Rose and Heather Gay appeared to be leading the line of inquiry in the Season 2 trailer. They question how the feds could've known for sure that they could find Jen Shah at Gay’s Beauty Lab business to arrest her. Surprisingly, even Lisa Barlow makes the comment that Meredith Marks knows more than she's letting on. The insinuations spark Shah to blowup on Marks at a dinner party. But there's more context to be had, as Marks recently told E! News:
I'm not a practicing lawyer, I never have been a practicing lawyer but I am a licensed lawyer and I do have the background and the education. So I think in some ways my knowledge of the law might have lead people to believe that I knew more about this situation than they did or than the general public did I guess. I don't really know. But these things happen over time and this was a federal investigation. It's not something that happens over night, everything takes a long time with this. I guess you'll have to see how it all unfolds.
The biggest surprise here is that Meredith Marks reveals she's a “licensed lawyer.” So far as I knew from The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City's first season, Marks only owns a jewelry/clothing business in Utah. (She, in fact, claimed to have high-profile clientele like Courteney Cox and Charlize Theron.) What's not so surprising is how Marks’ comments complicate the allusions to her tipping off the arresting officers to Jen Shah’s whereabouts. In truth, anyone (including any of the dozens on Bravo's production team) could have told the feds where Shah was and, if they were asked, they would have been legally bound to answer honestly anyway.
Jen Shah is accused of ringleading a telemarketing scheme that apparently stole from dozens of mostly elderly victims. She denies the allegations and faces trial next year. Despite the seriousness of the charges, Shah has taken to finding light in the situation, even jokingly comparing her legal trouble to that of Erika Jayne’s in The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.
It should be noted that Meredith Marks’ statement isn't exactly denying that she had anything to do with Jen Shah’s arrest. But in a surprise move, Bravo released the footage it had of Shah’s arrest before the second season premiere of Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, and it’s more than a little sketchy. In it, Shah is seen getting a mysterious phone call before she asked Whitney Rose to turn off her mic and then disappeared. The next thing all her co-stars know – except Meredith Marks, who wasn't present – is that Shah is being put in handcuffs.
As Meredith Marks says, we'll just have to “see how it all unfolds” for Jen Shah in The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City’s second season. Notably, Erika Jayne has faced an intensely emotional season in Beverly Hills, and it's not getting much better for her. See Salt Lake City's second season premieres September 12 on Bravo.
