The Rich Utah Wives and Their Scams I Part 1

Summary

---

Infamous – The Rich Utah Wives and Their Scams, Part 1

Podcast: Infamous
Hosts: Vanessa Grigoriadis, Gabriel Sherman, Natalie Robehmed
Date: April 9, 2026
Episode Theme:
A deep dive into the spectacular rise and criminal fall of Real Housewives of Salt Lake City star Jen Shah, exploring the psychology, mechanics, and victims of her telemarketing scam empire. This episode balances glitzy reality TV drama with the real-life costs of viral online hustle culture, told through the lens of an everyday victim.

---

Main Theme & Purpose

The episode launches a multi-part investigation into Jen Shah’s telemarketing scams, focusing not on the flashy headlines but on the nuanced, often-overlooked reality for her victims. The hosts examine cultural fascination with “rich Mormon wives,” the appeal and mechanics of dropshipping and affiliate marketing, and the social context that makes scams so prevalent and devastating.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. America’s Obsession with Mormon Wives and Scandal

• Cultural Backdrop: The explosion of interest in Mormon wives, especially in Utah, driven by reality television (e.g., Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, Taylor Frankie Paul).
• Irony: The contradiction between public displays of virtue and private scandals, which makes these stories irresistible in popular culture.
• Quote:

  “There’s just something about Utah and religion and femininity that has captured our cultural imagination...there is something we just love about these women pretending to be so virtuous only to find out it’s just not true.” (Host, 01:16)

2. Who Is Jen Shah?

• Persona: Described as dramatic, loud, and perfectly suited to reality TV – “the woman who was throwing the fuel on the fire.”
• Notable on-screen moments: Brash dialogue and memorable outbursts.
  • Quote:

    “What is your point of saying that? It’s to be a evil ass bitch.” (Jen Shah, 04:19)

• Initial Defense:

  “I understand that people have their opinion and their feelings because they’re basing it off of what they saw in the media... I’m more than just the headline.” (Jen Shah, 02:39)

3. Introduction to the Scam – The Victim’s Experience

Enter: Bridget Knight (The Victim)

• Background: A 64-year-old special ed teacher from Chicago, now in Las Vegas, in a vulnerable state after her husband’s death.
• Motivation: Burned out, grieving, considering retirement before she can afford it.
  • Quote:

    “My husband passed away from leukemia in 2015, and...I went through this grieving process...there was just this loss.” (Bridget Knight, 08:47)

The Setup

• Job Search: Bridget applies for jobs online, then receives a “life-changing” phone call promising lucrative opportunities in e-commerce, dropshipping, and affiliate marketing.
• Psychological Manipulation:
  • The scammer tailors the pitch to Bridget’s professional background, using “classroom rules” to gain her trust.
  • Quote:

    “He told her that this business wasn’t just about creating wealth. It was more about...creating wealth by using other people’s money.” (Host, 17:32)

• Financial Commitment: Bridget pays for:
  • Website creation: $9,800 (down from $12,600) [19:41]
  • Doba dropshipping membership: ≈$3,000 [24:07]
  • LLC setup: $1,660 [24:35]
  • Tax services: $3,890 [24:46]
  • “Coaching” sessions and marketing: $8,495 [26:54]
  • Corporate credit package: $2,950 [26:18]
  • Total: ~ $35,000
  • All expenses charged to multiple credit cards.

The Promise vs. Reality

• No Real Profits:
  • After months and tens of thousands spent, Bridget only sells two unused personal items on eBay. [28:40]
  • The dropshipping website sells nothing; even her test purchase doesn’t match the site’s description. [29:41]
  • Quote:

    “It wasn’t anything like the one that was on my website. Different quality, different look, different color, different everything. So I knew then that...something wasn’t right...” (Bridget Knight, 29:50)

• Ongoing Exploitation:
  • Continuous requests for more money to “fix” issues, e.g., $1,800 to remove errors from her website. [31:06]
• Emotional and Physical Toll:
  • Financial, emotional stress leads to a mild heart attack (broken heart syndrome).
  • Quote:

    “All I know is that my arm, my left arm got heavy...that’s when I had that mild heart attack, the first one.” (Bridget Knight, 31:52)

4. The Broader Scam & Its Cultural Context

• How the Scam Works:
  • The interaction is staged as “coaching,” with friendly, familiar-sounding mentors, always extracting more fees while victims see little to no results.
• Stock Testimonies:
  • Even the positive testimonials on sites like Doba use stock images, indicating the broader culture of fakery.
• Victims Multiply:
  • Bridget is far from alone—thousands are defrauded; most are vulnerable, looking for a “fresh start.”
• Hosts’ Analysis:
  • The scam preys on generational divides and the seduction of online hustle culture.
• Law Enforcement Steps In:
  • As the scam grows, authorities investigate, and camera crews on Bravo serendipitously capture the moment Jen Shah is about to be arrested.

5. The Iconic Arrest

• Setting: Real Housewives filming, a van of castmates waiting for Jen Shah to return after a suspicious phone call.
• Unprecedented Reality TV Moment:
  • “None of them have ever been swarmed by federal agents while cameras are rolling.” (Host, 35:41)
• Dramatic Irony:
  • Viewers know what’s about to happen, Housewives don’t.
• Lead Into Part 2:
  • Teases further exploration of Shah’s legal and personal downfall, and more stories from her victims.

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (With Timestamps)

• On Mormon Wives in Pop Culture:

  “There’s just something about Utah and religion and femininity that has captured our cultural imagination...there is something we just love about these women pretending to be so virtuous only to find out it’s just not true.” (Host, 01:16)

• Jen Shah on Her Public Image:

  “I understand that people have their opinion and their feelings because they are basing it off of what they saw in the media...I’m more than just the headline.” (Jen Shaw, 02:39)

• On Using Personal Tragedy As Hook:

  “My husband passed away from leukemia in 2015, and...I went through this grieving process...there was just this loss.” (Bridget Knight, 08:47)

• The ‘Coaching’ Pitch:

  “They were very friendly, very patient, like a friend. They behaved as if they knew me...So they didn’t feel like strangers.” (Bridget Knight, 25:46)

• On Financial Outlay:

  “Initially they said it was $12,600 for them to build a website, but they would do it...for me for 9,800.” (Bridget Knight, 19:41)

• On Product Quality:

  “I purchase an item personally to test it...It wasn’t anything like the one that was on my website. Different quality, different look, different color, different everything.” (Bridget Knight, 29:41, 29:50)

• On the Breaking Point:

  “I called them, and I believe that they said it would probably cost about an additional eighteen hundred dollars for them to remove the errors. And so that was like the breaking point.” (Bridget Knight, 31:06)

• Victim’s Health Fallout:

  “That’s when I had that mild heart attack, the first one.” (Bridget Knight, 31:52)

• On Public Arrest:

  “She’s the first woman on this strain of reality TV to attract the attention of the cops like this, right on camera.” (Host, 35:41)

---

Timestamps for Important Segments

• Cultural Context/Housewives & Irony – 01:16
• Intro to Jen Shah & Her Persona – 02:39–04:57
• Victim (Bridget Knight) Introduced – 07:00
• How the Scam is Pitched – 10:56–14:09
• Financial Investments Begin – 19:41
• Total Money Lost/Deep in the Scam – 26:54–28:26
• Nothing Works, Emotional Toll – 29:41–31:52
• Jen Shah’s Arrest Teased on Reality TV – 34:26–37:02

---

Conclusion

Infamous – The Rich Utah Wives and Their Scams, Part 1 masterfully interweaves reality TV spectacle with genuine investigative journalism, peering behind social media-optimized facades to show the pain wrought by the influencer economy’s darker side. By foregrounding a victim’s story, the episode lays bare not just how these scams work, but why vulnerable people get ensnared—and previews the explosive legal and personal fallout to come in Part 2.

---

End of Summary

Transcript

[Molly Sims]

Hey guys, this is Molly Sims, host of Lipstick on the Rim. So I have a little bit of a pet peeve that I think you're going to relate to this. I'll be having a great day, feeling good, and someone will say to me, you look tired. And I'm like, I promise you I'm not really tired. But here's what I've learned. My eyelids, they do sit a little low. And once my doctor explained that to me, it actually kind of made a lot of sense. She prescribed me upneek, the first and only FDA approved prescription eye drop for adults with low lying eyelids. One drop per eye. In the morning, and I notice my eyes look more open awake within minutes. It's like just one simple step. That's it. And the results? Guess what? They last up to eight hours. Learn more about upneek.com that's u p n e e q.com or talk to your doctor. Just a little quick safety note about UPEEK. Oxymetazoline hydrochloride ophthalmic solution 0.1%. Tell your doctor your symptoms and medical history, including blood pressure, blood flow issues, and heart, brain or eye disease. Drooping eyelids can be caused by other more serious conditions, such as a stroke. Do not touch the tip of the Upne vial to your eye or any other surface. This is not a complete list of risks.

[Narrator / Host (possibly Vanessa Grigoriadis or Natalie Roberman)]

Campsite Media

for the past few years, there's been nothing more popular than Mormon wives in our culture. From the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City to the secret lives of Mormon Wives to the huge blowup over the Bachelorette casting, the star of that show, Taylor Frankie Paul. There's just something about Utah and religion and femininity that has captured our cultural imagination. And the massive irony is that whether they're soft swinging, whatever that means, or being accused of assault or scamming, there is something we just love about these women pretending to be so virtuous only to find out it's just not true. I mean, everyone eats that up. Of course we do. So we're about to focus on one of the most extreme stories of irony in this arena, even maybe more extreme than Taylor Frankie Paul being accused of domestic violence, though we'll get into that in a later episode as well. And that is the story of the one and only Jen Shaw. You may have seen that Jen gave an interview very recently and she is trying to defend herself.

[Jen Shaw]

I understand that people have their opinion and their feelings because they are basing it off of what they saw in the media. They're basing it off of of the headlines. But what I would hope is that they would give me the grace to at least hear me and to understand that, you know, I'm more than just the headline.

[Narrator / Host (possibly Vanessa Grigoriadis or Natalie Roberman)]

But right now, we're going to go behind these headlines to find out what Jen was actually doing and speak to some of the people who were victimized by her. And you may think you know the story of Jen Shaw's scams, or at least the broad strokes. She's a real housewife. She ran a scam, she got arrested for it, she spent a couple years in prison. But there is really so much more to it from what actually happened in this very complex, multi layered crime to who the thousands of victims really were, to what it tells us about our society right now. From dropshipping to everybody trying to get rich online, to that just sneaking feeling you might have that everything is sort of a scam. But first, back to Jen. Jen Shaw was, of course, one of the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City. She appeared in seasons one through three of the hit Bravo show, and she was arguably the group's ringleader. She was certainly like the woman who was throwing the fuel on the fire. She had long black hair, plump cheekbones, eyebrows that were as arch as her comments, and. And she was known to frequently yell and to point fingers, literally.

[Jen Shaw]

What is your point of saying that it's to be a evil ass bitch

[Narrator / Host (possibly Vanessa Grigoriadis or Natalie Roberman)]

and just say something.

[Jen Shaw]

Who the says that? That's like looking at a little baby with cancer and saying, oh, you smell like cancer. Are you kidding me right now?

[Narrator / Host (possibly Vanessa Grigoriadis or Natalie Roberman)]

I mean, yes, that's quite foul mouthed. Jen is certainly extreme in both looks and personality. It's like somebody upped the contrast on a picture. I mean, you can just imagine her walking into a room and a reality TV producer going, her, I want her.

[Jen Shaw]

And if people want me not to lose my mind, I defend my family.

[Narrator / Host (possibly Vanessa Grigoriadis or Natalie Roberman)]

Oh, and I hope Jen dresses loudly too. Lots of ruffles, feathers, exotic prints. She's so dramatic. Which is perfect for the Real Housewives franchise, A show that follows rich, dramatic married women as they often become unmarried and sometimes less rich, but never less dramatic. In fact, I think you could argue that no one in Housewives history would ever turn out to be as dramatic as Jen Shaw. So what was Jen Shaw actually doing? How did the dropshipping, affiliate marketing, influencer economy factor into her scam? And what is it about our culture that makes so many of us so willing to scam and so vulnerable to being scammed. From sony music entertainment and campside media. This is infamous. I'm vanessa grigoriadis.

And I'm natalie roberman.

This is the rich utah wives and their scams, part one. In order to understand what Jen Shaw was doing, we think we need to start way on the opposite end of the story. Not with Jen, the dominant one, the overdog, but with one of the people who was harmed by her. This victim's name is Bridget Knight, and she's a little understated, but in some ways, that makes her the perfect place to begin, because the scam Jen has been accused of running was almost a little boring. And that's part of what made it so diabolically perfect.

It's October 2017 at a public school in Las Vegas, Nevada. As the kids throw their books in their bags and slam their lockers. In one classroom, a special ed teacher is getting ready to go home.

[Bridget Knight]

I was at work. I was actually preparing to leave for the day. I was just minding my own business and just. I received a phone call. And that phone call was life changing. My name is Bridget Thornton Knight. I'm 64 years old. I was born and raised in Chicago. I have always worked in the field of education. Started working with Chicago public schools in the latter part of the 80s. I started as a special education teacher, and then I started working as an assistant principal in the late 90s.

[Narrator / Host (possibly Vanessa Grigoriadis or Natalie Roberman)]

Bridget talks in the sweet, measured way of someone's grandmother. Though looking at her, you'd never know she was old enough to be one. With dark hair and neatly painted lips, she looks much younger than 64.

[Bridget Knight]

It was always my desire to live in Las Vegas, Nevada. I met my husband. We married in 2003, and I ended up moving to Las Vegas and working. I started working with Clark County School District.

[Narrator / Host (possibly Vanessa Grigoriadis or Natalie Roberman)]

I don't know if you had a special ed teacher at your school or if you remember them, but Bridget seems like exactly the sort of woman who would excel at it. She's calm, patient, pretty, unflappable. The type of person who could help a kid with developmental needs. Kneeling down to get on their level and meeting them where they're at, even if it means going through the same material over and over. But even someone like Bridget can get unsettled by life sometimes.

[Bridget Knight]

My husband passed away from leukemia in 2015, and I. I don't know, something changed inside of me, and I just don't know how to explain it. I just. There was just this loss, and I went through this grieving process after her

[Narrator / Host (possibly Vanessa Grigoriadis or Natalie Roberman)]

husband died, and she was in this fog of grief. Bridget Began to feel burned out by her job. The long hours, the in person work with kids that really needed everything she could give. Bridget was in her mid-50s at this point and was thinking about retiring early, but couldn't really afford it.

[Bridget Knight]

I knew that if I were to retire, my pension would be lowered. Okay, I wouldn't receive full benefits because I would be retiring early.

[Narrator / Host (possibly Vanessa Grigoriadis or Natalie Roberman)]

So Bridget decides to start looking for new opportunities, something she could do to supplement her income.

[Bridget Knight]

I wanted to do something different, something fresh, something new. And that's how I ended up with, you know, exploring other possibilities. I wanted a home based business, I wanted to set my own hours, I wanted to be my own boss. I wanted to call the shots. I didn't want to have to answer to anyone. I wanted to kind of do my own thing and have that flexibility.

[Narrator / Host (possibly Vanessa Grigoriadis or Natalie Roberman)]

Bridget started applying to job positions online via websites like indeed, if you've applied to a job in recent years, you know the deal. Uploading your cv, submitting it to a ton of different positions, just crossing your fingers and hoping desperately to hear back from the void. This is the position Bridget is in, hoping, maybe even expecting to get a call from someone offering her a job. When her phone rings.

[Bridget Knight]

I just felt like, okay, well someone is calling me back about some of the jobs that I applied for.

[Narrator / Host (possibly Vanessa Grigoriadis or Natalie Roberman)]

Bridget picks up the man on the other line says he has a job opportunity for her.

[Bridget Knight]

That's when I learned about the E commerce business. I knew very little about E commerce, but from the gentleman who was telling me all about the program, it just sounded like a win win because they talked about how I would only have to put so many hours into it each week. He asked me how many hours did I want to work. And so I told him how many hours I wanted to work and he said, oh sure, well that would be fantastic. And you can make X number of dollars if you work so many hours.

[Narrator / Host (possibly Vanessa Grigoriadis or Natalie Roberman)]

Standing in her classroom, perhaps it's covered by artwork from her special ed students. Bridget thinks this could be it. This could be the chance she's been looking for. Her opportunity to semi retire, work from home, supplement her pension. After 30 odd long years in education. The man explains there's a simple way she can make money from home on her own terms. It's called dropshipping.

[Dropshipping Influencer / Advertiser]

I've made millions of dollars with dropshipping and I recently helped a complete beginner with no experience go from zero to over $2,000 a day.

[Narrator / Host (possibly Vanessa Grigoriadis or Natalie Roberman)]

Now, if you're like me, you may have heard the term dropshipping. Even if you don't really know what it means. It's been all over the Internet in the last few years with influencers talking about how it's an easy way to make millions. Bridget, who isn't really all that online, wasn't familiar with it.

[Bridget Knight]

I didn't know anything about dropshipping at that time.

[Narrator / Host (possibly Vanessa Grigoriadis or Natalie Roberman)]

But the man on the other end explains it. A customer would buy something from Bridget's website and then Bridget would use a supplier to fulfill that order and ship that item to the customer.

[Bridget Knight]

I would contract with a company using them as a way to deliver or ship the products to my clients.

[Narrator / Host (possibly Vanessa Grigoriadis or Natalie Roberman)]

This means that Bridget wouldn't be responsible for any inventory herself, so nothing would be sitting in her garage taking up space. All of these orders would be placed online and then fulfilled somewhere far away. All Bridget needed to do was set up a website and the dollars would start rolling in. But that's not all. The guy on the phone has another potential business for Bridget too.

[Bridget Knight]

Another way would be to sell products on ebay. I had never done that before, but they made it seem glamorous.

[Narrator / Host (possibly Vanessa Grigoriadis or Natalie Roberman)]

Okay, glamorous selling things on ebay. But the guy on the phone is persuasive, saying that it's a cool way to make money. It seems hip. It seems like a world that other younger people are able to access. And now she is too. Even though the idea is Bridget can either sell her own stuff that she has lying around at home or. Or flip items she buys elsewhere.

[Bridget Knight]

So buying it at a cheaper price, reselling it on ebay at a higher price to turn a profit.

[Narrator / Host (possibly Vanessa Grigoriadis or Natalie Roberman)]

There's a third potential income stream too.

[Bridget Knight]

They talked about. Oh, I can't. I can't remember the term. Just building content on my website. So writing blogs, making it interesting.

[Narrator / Host (possibly Vanessa Grigoriadis or Natalie Roberman)]

The term Bridget's looking for is affiliate marketing, another frequently bandied about phrase that's really popular with a certain type of online hustle crowd. Essentially, it's where you earn commission by posting content like blogs or pictures or Instagram stories that contain affiliate links to products. When people buy that product through your link, you get a cut. Content creators do this all, all the time when they're asking you to buy that yoga set or that appliance using their link. This guy is saying Bridget can make money by writing blogs that contain links to products and then use those same blogs to drive traffic to her own products. And Bridget thinks this all sounds great, but the guy says, don't just take my word for it.

[Bridget Knight]

He sent me some videos, testimonies of people who have actually done this affiliate marketing and how they were successful at doing it and how much money they made doing it, he said. These are real people making real money

[Narrator / Host (possibly Vanessa Grigoriadis or Natalie Roberman)]

and Bridget could be one of them. All she has to do is build a website, but it'll cost her. And the thing is, this is just the beginning of the grift. As Bridget writes in a self published book she wrote about this story, a grifter has a powerful grip. They will instantly take hold of you and they won't let go. Vulnerability soon sets in. All reasoning and understanding go right out the window. And that's what she believes happened to her.

It's the middle of the week, you're tired, you're hungry, and all you want is a home cooked meal. When I'm in that situation, I end up making some strange amalgamation of a salad with some sort of protein because everyone seems to be telling me I should be eating more of that right now. And really what I want is something a little more adventurous. With HelloFresh, you can try a whole range of recipes from all around the world. Choose from 80 plus global recipes every month, including Vietnamese, Moroccan, Caribbean and more. Get international ingredients sent straight to you. So dinner is always the destination. I use HelloFresh and you can too. Go to hellofresh.com scandal10fm now to get 10 free meals plus a free NutriBullet Ultra plus two in one compact kitchen system has $189.99 value on your third box. Free meals applied as a discount on the first box. New subscribers only. Varies by plan. Must order the third box by May 31, 2026.

[Palmolive Advertiser]

This episode is brought to you by Palmolive. Family time isn't just the big moments. It's weeknight dinners, sitting around the table, everyone talking all at once. So when the plates are empty and the sink is full, use use Palmolive Ultra. Palmolive's most powerful formula removes up to 99.9% of grease, leaving your dishes sparkling clean. And the new convenient pump makes cleaning even easier so you can spend less time tackling dishes and more time together. Shop [e-mail]

[Narrator / Host (possibly Vanessa Grigoriadis or Natalie Roberman)]

so one of the things people don't understand about these types of scams is how psychological they are. The people on the other end of the phone use sophisticated techniques designed to hook and manipulate their victims. Techniques that appear to be specifically tailored to each individual. Bridget was a teacher, and the man on the other end of the phone broke things down for her as she might for her students, laying out a sort of lesson plan. According to Bridget's, book. He told her that this business wasn't just about creating wealth. It was more about, quote, creating wealth by using other people's money. There were four expectations he had for her. Sort of like four classroom rules. One, she needed to commit time to her business. Two, she needed to be teachable, meaning she needed to be a good student, receptive to learning all the material presented to her and do the homework given to her by coaches, coaches that would be teaching her how to run her business successfully. Three, she needed to be open to using what he called good debt to grow her business. For example, putting business costs on a credit card that would be paid off when she turned a profit. Four, she needed to be a decision maker who took action, who would decide that day to commit to growing her business. Bridget wants to be a decision maker, a good student, someone who leverages good debt to grow her business. So when the man on the other end of the phone presents an option for her to invest in a website of her own, Bridget is intrigued.

[Bridget Knight]

I could build it on my own. They can build it for me.

[Narrator / Host (possibly Vanessa Grigoriadis or Natalie Roberman)]

If you're my age, you've probably had to make a personal website or two in your time. There are a million podcast ads about it. You go on one of these providers, sign up, pay a hundred bucks or whatever, and then customize your site using one of the templates they provide. But again, Bridget isn't really online. It's possible she's never even heard of Squarespace Plus. What this guy's suggesting seems pretty complicated. She needs a website. She can sell stuff through a whole online shop. He tells her for them to build

[Bridget Knight]

it for me, it would cost X number of it would cost. It was a lot of money. Okay, so initially they said it was $12,600 for them to build a website, but they would do it, could do it for me for 9,800.

[Narrator / Host (possibly Vanessa Grigoriadis or Natalie Roberman)]

Now, if you're thinking that's an insane amount of money, if it were me, I'd hang up the phone immediately. Well, you probably would have. But I want you to put yourself in Bridget's shoes for a minute. Really put yourself there. You've just spent the last three decades with a hands on job teaching kids, not on a computer screen all day. You've heard about work from home jobs, but there aren't really people in your circles who do that. And Bridget really wants to make a change in her life. This guy seems to be going out of his way to give her a good deal, telling her it's usually 12 grand, but they'll do it for 10. Things are moving pretty fast. After all, Bridget only just got her first phone call from these people. But she's eager to try something new. Remember, Bridget lost her husband about two years prior, and she's now a widow on her own in the world. She wants, needs something different.

[Bridget Knight]

It was like a way out. It was. It was a way to just begin fresh. And so I was like, okay, that sounds great.

[Narrator / Host (possibly Vanessa Grigoriadis or Natalie Roberman)]

She decides to go for it. She puts $9,800 on a credit card to build her website.

[Bridget Knight]

It was on my US Bank Visa card.

[Narrator / Host (possibly Vanessa Grigoriadis or Natalie Roberman)]

Bridget thinks this is exciting. It's an investment, sure, but sometimes you have to spend money to make money, right? Bridget's finally getting to do something on her own for herself that she's passionate about, which, for Bridget, is organizing.

[Bridget Knight]

They asked me about my interests, and I was telling them that I'm a good organizer. And so I wanted to sell products that fell within that category, you know, for organization.

[Narrator / Host (possibly Vanessa Grigoriadis or Natalie Roberman)]

When I speak to Bridget, she's sitting in a very tidy home office with shelves full of neatly labeled folders behind her. She certainly seems very, very organized.

[Bridget Knight]

Closet organization. Any place in your home that you would want to organize your garage, your. Your pantry, container stuff, furniture, small pieces, that sort of thing. So my website was going to consist of those products.

[Narrator / Host (possibly Vanessa Grigoriadis or Natalie Roberman)]

Remember, Bridget is going to be dropshipping, meaning another company will be handling the actual orders. The company Bridget uses for that is called Doba.

[Bridget Knight]

So if anyone was interested in purchasing, for instance, garage storage once on my website, they would be able to search for that product. Then they would go on ahead, make their purchase, and then Doba would ship the product to them.

[Narrator / Host (possibly Vanessa Grigoriadis or Natalie Roberman)]

Doba is a real dropshipping website that stocks the sort of things you might see on TikTok shop. Jade rollers, bucket hats that also hold your phone, random cleaning devices that promise to buff your bathtub shinier than anything else ever could. Just scrub here and there or anywhere you see dirty, and you will never

[Molly Sims]

have to deep clean again.

[Narrator / Host (possibly Vanessa Grigoriadis or Natalie Roberman)]

If you go on doba.com it's filled with bright colors, apparent user testimonials, and lots of little bubbles projecting potential revenue and profit. The testimonials say things like, quote, doba made dropshipping a breeze for me. I was a total beginner, but their guides and support got me going fast. Now I've got a store up and running, making sales every week. That testimonial is from someone named Andrea Giannella, and the picture beside it is of a black woman with natural hair holding a mug. She's in a white cardigan and smiling straight at the camera. I did a reverse image search of that photo, the one next to Andrea Gianla's name. And guess what? It's a stock photo available for 25 on Shutterstock with the description, young woman taking break and drinking coffee in cafe. So, yeah, not saying that that testimonial isn't real, but back to Bridget. Needless to say, she's not doing reverse image searches. She signs up for a membership to Doba.

[Bridget Knight]

That was about $3,000. I can't remember the exact amount.

[Narrator / Host (possibly Vanessa Grigoriadis or Natalie Roberman)]

Now, we should be clear. DOBA wasn't implicated in this scam. And Bridget thinks she's starting a totally legit business.

[Bridget Knight]

My domain name was called Bridge Over Clutter.

[Narrator / Host (possibly Vanessa Grigoriadis or Natalie Roberman)]

Bridge Over Clutter. Like the Simon and Garfunkel song Bridge Over Troubled Water. So with the Bridge Over Clutter website in development, she needs to set up an LLC for her organizing business.

[Bridget Knight]

To set up the LLC entity that was $1,660 that I placed on my Discover card.

[Narrator / Host (possibly Vanessa Grigoriadis or Natalie Roberman)]

They'll also take care of taxes for her llc.

[Bridget Knight]

There was a tax preparation program which came with a roughly $35 monthly fee, and that was $3,890 that I put on my Discover card as well.

[Narrator / Host (possibly Vanessa Grigoriadis or Natalie Roberman)]

In order to be teachable, Bridget the teacher is taking endless phone calls from these guys, doing coaching sessions and homework assignments to learn how to run her business.

[Bridget Knight]

I would pay in order to participate in these trainings. So I was getting the training for how to run a website, how to do all of the drop shipping, how to do affiliate marketing, how to do the blogging.

[Narrator / Host (possibly Vanessa Grigoriadis or Natalie Roberman)]

Most of the sessions last about 30 minutes, according to Bridget. Sometimes the coaches would also send videos of themselves or clips from YouTube. There were different coaches, but all of them had one thing in common.

[Bridget Knight]

They were very friendly, very patient, like a friend. They behaved as if they knew me, okay, like they knew me personally, like a longtime friend, you know? So they didn't feel like strangers. They could relate to me. It's hard to explain. It was. It was almost as if I knew them personally and I didn't.

[Narrator / Host (possibly Vanessa Grigoriadis or Natalie Roberman)]

But of course, these people on the other end of the phone aren't Bridget's friends. They're charging her money.

[Bridget Knight]

There was a corporate credit package that cost $2,950. And that was for. It was. It was for an executive corporate credit package deal that was $2950 that I put on my Discover card.

[Narrator / Host (possibly Vanessa Grigoriadis or Natalie Roberman)]

That's not all, because Bridget isn't really making any Sales. Yet it seems like she needs help with marketing. So a third company enters the mix. One that can train Bridget in marketing specifically.

[Bridget Knight]

That was for the marketing coaching sessions. I think I purchased like 14 coaching sessions and that was $8,495.

[Narrator / Host (possibly Vanessa Grigoriadis or Natalie Roberman)]

Now all Bridget has to do is start making sales. And bridge over clutter will lead her to a pot of gold.

Right Foreign.

[Sam's Club Advertiser]

With Sam's club, you have the freedom to shop your own way. Curbside pickup delivered to your doorstep. Come in and grab it yourself. Yes, yes, yes. They've got plenty of options. Your call. Say yes to shopping the way you want. Join [e-mail] yes and you must be 18 years or older to purchase a membership. And membership is subject to qualifications. Visit samsclub.com yes and for details.

[Dropshipping Influencer / Advertiser]

You tell yourself no one wants your college era band tees, but on Depop, people are searching for exactly what you've got. You once paid a small fortune for them at merch stands. Now a teenager who calls them vintage will offer that same small fortune back. Sell them easily on Depop. Just snap a few photos and we'll take care of the rest. Who knew your questionable music taste would be a money making machine? Your style can make you cash. Start selling on Depop, where taste recognizes taste.

[Narrator / Host (possibly Vanessa Grigoriadis or Natalie Roberman)]

So by January 2018, even though Bridget's invested about $35,000 in her new business, she's not raking it in yet. Far from it. In fact, she's only made two sales on eBay.

[Bridget Knight]

The ceiling fan medallion. You know, the kind that you place on the ceiling and just, you know, to make the ceiling fan pretty, you have this medallion that you put around it. So I remember purchasing that medallion from like a Lowe's several years before and I never used was still in its original packaging. So I sold that on ebay. And I purchased some car seat covers for my son's car and I never gave it to him, so it was still in his original package. So I sold that on ebay.

[Narrator / Host (possibly Vanessa Grigoriadis or Natalie Roberman)]

Her own website, the one she spent nearly $10,000 to make, which is supposed to dropship organizational goods to the people who might want to buy from her. That's not going so well. In fact, Bridget hasn't made a single sale on her website. So she decides to try it out for herself just to make sure everything's working as it should.

[Bridget Knight]

I purchase an item personally to test it.

[Narrator / Host (possibly Vanessa Grigoriadis or Natalie Roberman)]

She buys a shoe bag, the kind you might use to travel with. It arrives in the mail.

[Bridget Knight]

It wasn't anything like the one that was on My website. A different quality, different look, different color, different everything. So I knew then that, you know, something wasn't right because it was a test item and I didn't get the item that I purchased.

[Narrator / Host (possibly Vanessa Grigoriadis or Natalie Roberman)]

So Bridget calls up the team and complains again and again and again.

[Bridget Knight]

I complained so much, so many times, you know, about the company, about everything, actually, to the point where, you know, I just couldn't handle it anymore.

[Narrator / Host (possibly Vanessa Grigoriadis or Natalie Roberman)]

But nobody seems to be doing anything. Bridget's frustrated. She's put $35,000 on credit cards to set up this business, and she has yet to make a single sale.

[Bridget Knight]

I did not sell not one single thing. I didn't sell anything from the website that I developed or that they developed for me.

[Narrator / Host (possibly Vanessa Grigoriadis or Natalie Roberman)]

Then one day, she logs onto her website and the page won't open. She calls again.

[Bridget Knight]

I was trying to determine why there were so many errors on my website and if there was a way to. To correct them. And I called them, and I believe that they said that it would probably cost about an additional eighteen hundred dollars for them to remove the errors. And so that was like the breaking point.

[Narrator / Host (possibly Vanessa Grigoriadis or Natalie Roberman)]

Bridget starts to panic. If this were a real company, they would be trying to make this right, not trying to get her to pay even more money to fix what appear to be their own errors. Suddenly, everything starts to swirl. Bridget begins to wonder, has she been the victim of a scam?

[Bridget Knight]

All I know is that my arm, my left arm got heavy. I could just feel like pain radiating from my shoulder all the way down to my wrist, practically. And I knew something wasn't right. That's when I had that mild heart attack, the first one.

[Narrator / Host (possibly Vanessa Grigoriadis or Natalie Roberman)]

It's all too much. Bridget says in her book that she'd been diagnosed with a syndrome called broken heart syndrome. It's brought on by stress and rapidly weakening heart muscles. Never in her life did Bridget expect to be the victim of a scam. And never in her worst wildest dreams could she have imagined that one of the people allegedly running this scam was not a shadowy figure, but a person who was very much in the light, who was right there on tv. A real housewife. Bridget had even asked the guy who was calling her on the phone all the time once, who's the leader of this company? Who's your ultimate boss? And she says that he said he couldn't tell her, that it would be illegal to tell her. Now we should say that Jen has denied that she was a kingpin in these scams. The government indictment tracks schemes back to 2012, and Jen notes that she wasn't running any companies back then. So the government's characterizations are inaccurate. Jen claims her real involvement was much more complicated. And we'll get into that in a bit. But for now, over in Salt Lake City, Utah, a ways away from Bridget, none of the real Housewives know what's going on either. But law enforcement is starting to investigate all the different victims of this multi layered, multi company telemarketing scam. I mean, that company that Bridget mentions, that's not even in their documents. But she says they called her all the time. They're calling up Bridget, they're calling up different people. They're even more certain than ever about what they're hearing. And by season two, episode 10 of the Hit Bravo show Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, it's all coming to a head. One that's as bombastic and extraordinary as the scam itself is tired and sad. Foreign.

It's a chilly morning in March 2021. The temperature hovering right around freezing as a sprinter van idles in the parking lot of a strip mall in Salt Lake City. The black van is filled with the glamorous, wealthy cast of the Real Housewives who are getting ready to go on a trip. They're meeting up here to travel together, but one of the women in their group is missing. But I don't know if we should, like, wait till she figures out what's going on. I mean, this is just not awesome. The woman who isn't there is Jen Shah. She exited the van suddenly after getting a phone call. Apparently her husband is in hospital and Jen's told the woman she's gone to investigate what's going on. Now the women don't know whether to wait for her to come back or go on without her. I think if she can make it,

then she can catch a flight and

[Molly McLaughlin]

probably beat us there.

[Molly Sims]

I think we should just go.

[Narrator / Host (possibly Vanessa Grigoriadis or Natalie Roberman)]

But she'd want. I mean, she wants us to go. Yeah, let's just go. Let's see what happens. Clutching their iPhones, their poker straight hair banging against their very filled cheekbones, the other Real Housewives debate Jen's transport options. If it's not super serious, can she

[Sam's Club Advertiser]

get a private driver?

[Narrator / Host (possibly Vanessa Grigoriadis or Natalie Roberman)]

I mean, one of the Shaw squad will drive her. Yeah, she has private driver.

[Jen Shaw]

She has. After Becky call. Yeah.

[Narrator / Host (possibly Vanessa Grigoriadis or Natalie Roberman)]

One of the eight will drive her.

[Molly McLaughlin]

Yeah.

[Narrator / Host (possibly Vanessa Grigoriadis or Natalie Roberman)]

The other women aren't that worried about Jen. She's got her Shaw squad, the team of assistants and employees that she pays. Surely one of them will be able to get Jen where she needs to go, though they don't know yet. Jen is about to take another trip to jail. This has never happened before in Real Housewives history. Sure, some of the other stars in the show have had legal trouble. I mean, more than a couple. So much so that people even talk about a Real Housewives depression prison pipeline. But none of them have ever been swarmed by federal agents while cameras are rolling. She's the first woman on this strain of reality TV to attract the attention of the cops like this, right on camera. It could have been more like an episode of Cops than Housewives because Jen's going to be indicted by the US Government for allegedly carrying out a telemarketing that helped defraud thousands of victims. Victims just like Bridget. And they're gonna want to be made whole. But like any good influencer, Jen's gonna fight back, starting with her time on tv.

Coming up on the Rich Utah Wives and their Scam. The only thing I'm guilty of is being Shaw.

Amazing.

Jen Shaw is facing prison time after defrauding people out of millions.

[Bridget Knight]

My name is Molly McLaughlin.

[Narrator / Host (possibly Vanessa Grigoriadis or Natalie Roberman)]

I am one of Jen Shaw's many victims sentenced to six years out in two. How is that possible?

[Jen Shaw]

Everybody makes mistakes. And I think it's about, you know, how do you come back from that?

[Molly McLaughlin]

I want to tell you guys about a podcast that is near and dear to my heart. And I cannot believe it already came out a year ago. And you can all go listen to it ad free by subscribing to the binge podcast channel.

[Corinne]

What podcast, Corinne? Tell us.

[Molly McLaughlin]

Oh, it's called Blink Jake Handle story. I created it about a man named Jake who I met who is the only survivor of a term terminal brain illness brought on by heroin use. But there is a lot of mystery and medical malpractice and true crime elements that are very shocking and surprising and even some supernatural elements. So this is definitely.

[Corinne]

It is definitely an amazing story and it's very unique. Did such an incredible job telling the story and sharing it with the world. So if you have not listened to it yet, my goodness, where have you been? Because Blink is so freaking good.

[Molly McLaughlin]

Thank you so much. Search for Blink wherever you listen and subscribers to the binge will get the entire season ad free. Plus you'll get exclusive access to the over 60 other true crime stories on the binge podcast channel. Hit subscribe on Apple podcasts or head to getthebinge.com.