Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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That's huntingmatthewnichols.com. And welcome to The Hunt.
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 blow up 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 on very recently, and she is trying to defend herself.
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 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
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.
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Chapter 2: What cultural phenomenon surrounds Mormon wives in media?
I'm Vanessa Rigoriadis.
And I'm Natalie Robomed.
This is The Rich Utah Wives and Their Scams, Part 1. In order to understand what Jen Shah 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.
I was at work. I was actually preparing to leave for the day. I was just minding my own business. 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. I 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.
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.
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.
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Chapter 3: Who is Jen Shah and what is her significance in reality TV?
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.
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.
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.
I didn't know anything about dropshipping at that time.
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.
I would contract with a company using them as a way to deliver or ship the products to Bridget.
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.
Another way would be to sell products on eBay. I had never done that before, but they made it seem glamorous.
OK, 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 flip items she buys elsewhere.
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Chapter 4: How did Bridget Knight's career lead her to Jen Shah's scam?
Like a Lowe's several years before, and I never used it. It 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 this original package. So I sold that on eBay.
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. I purchased an item personally to test it.
She buys a shoe bag, the kind you might use to travel with.
It arrives in the mail. It wasn't anything like the one that was on my website. A different quality, different look, different color, everything. So I knew then that something wasn't right because it was a test item and I didn't get the item that I purchased.
So Bridget calls up the team and complains. Again. And again. And again.
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.
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.
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.
Then, one day, she logs onto her website and the page won't open. She calls again.
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