The news of Jen Shah pleading guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud broke while Cohen was filming his radio talk show
Andy Cohen has mixed feelings about Jen Shah’s recent court plea.
The Watch What Happens Live host, 54, reacted in real time on Monday to the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City star changing her plea from to guilty on previous charges of conspiring to commit wire fraud and money laundering.
“I don’t know how to feel about this, Jen Shah pleading guilty,” Cohen told actor Jonah Hill, who had stopped by Cohen’s SiriusXM show Radio Andy.
Hill countered, “Right, well, when you say you’re guilty of something, it maybe means you’re guilty.”
For Cohen, though, “All it means is she’s changing her plea.”
Cohen admitted part of the reason he feels conflicted about Shah’s latest legal move is because he’s grown close to her.
In fact, the 48-year-old reality star recently surprised his 2-month-old daughter Lucy with a present. “And I was like, ‘Jen Shah, with everything you have going on, that you thought to send to send Lucy a gift…,'” he told Hill. “I just thought that was so nice of her.”
Hill later added, “I’ll say that about Jen Shah — at least she’s honest.”
When a listener had called into the show to draw comparisons to when Real Housewives of New Jersey star Teresa Guidice pleaded guilty to fraud in 2014, Cohen pushed back.
He explained, “I also think what I’ve found regarding viewer response to some of these moments that have happened, some of the viewers are more outraged when there are — you know, when you look at Tom Girardi and what it looks like he did — actual victims that you can look at,” he explained. “When you look at Joe Giudice defrauding the government of some tax money, I think you wind up getting more upset when you know that there are victims.”
Shah and one of her assistants, Stuart Smith, were arrested during production of season 2 of RHOSLC in March for their connection to a nationwide telemarketing scheme. She originally plead not guilty to the charges, but appeared in a New York City court on Monday to change her plea.
Per a Twitter thread from Inner City Press’s Matthew Russell Lee, Shah told Judge Sidney H. Stein on Monday that she had committed “Wire fraud, offering services with little to no value.”
“We used interstate telephones and emails. I knew many of the purchasers were over the age of 55. I am so sorry,” she added.
Judge Stein then asked the reasoning for these things being purchased, Shah explained she had offered “misrepresentations, regarding the value of the product or service, of which it had little to none.”
When asked by Judge Stein, Shah went on to say that she knew that what did was “wrong and illegal.”
Shah’s guilty plea means she will not stand trial, but she faces a maximum penalty of up to 30 years in prison. In court, Shah also agreed to not appeal if she is sentence to “168 months’ prison or few,” which equates to 14 years.
“Ms. Shah is a good woman who crossed a line,” Priya Chaudhry, an attorney for Shah told PEOPLE. “She accepts full responsibility for her actions and deeply apologizes to all who have been harmed. Ms. Shah is also sorry for disappointing her husband, children, family, friends, and supporters. Jen pled guilty because she wants to pay her debt to society and put this ordeal behind her and her family.”
Despite her guilty plea, Shah will still be a part of the upcoming third season of The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, according to a source.
“She’s had Meredith [Marks] and Heather [Gay] by her side, who have been very supportive of their friend during a difficult time,” a source tells PEOPLE exclusively. “Obviously her legal troubles have not been easy for Jen, let alone making this decision to plead guilty.”
This case is “a very big part of Jen’s story,” the source continues.
“Producers don’t want us to stop following it now,” the insider adds. “They’ll keep filming with her as long as they can, just like they did with Teresa [Giudice].”
Shah is set to be sentenced on Nov. 28.
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