Update, September 19, 2022: With Mary Cosby leaving The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, the show already wasn’t going to get a second legal scandal — but now we know we wouldn’t have missed out on much anyway. The charges against Cosby have been dropped owing to insufficient evidence, People has reported. Cosby celebrated in an Instagram post. “to the people who are committed believing lies! 🥰,” she wrote. “Truth will always Stand❤️🙏.” Cosby’s son, Robert Cosby Jr., who had also been charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor and providing shelter to a runaway, had his charges dismissed in February.
Original story from August 5, 2021, follows.
Real Housewives of Salt Lake City’s Mary Cosby is facing charges of providing shelter to a runaway and contributing to the delinquency of a minor, court records reveal. Both charges are misdemeanors. News of Cosby’s legal woes first emerged among reality-TV bloggers, notably on Jay’s Reality Blog.
“Mary is saddened that she was dragged into another family’s domestic situation,” a representative for Cosby reportedly told E! News on Thursday. The rep also reportedly said Cosby “is confident that this misunderstanding will be cleared up soon.”
There aren’t a lot of details in the court filings about what allegedly happened. The documents, filed in Salt Lake City Justice Court, list the alleged incident date as April 8, 2021. Cosby pleaded not guilty to both counts on June 28, the filings also say.
A remote pretrial conference is scheduled for August 12, 2021. These docs also state that the total recommended fine for these charges is $1,380. Reps for NBCUniversal, which owns Bravo, said the network was not commenting. Cosby’s representative did not respond to calls or numerous emails seeking comment over a period of several hours.
Cosby is not the only RHOSLC star embroiled in legal drama: Frenemy Jennifer Shah was arrested in April on charges of wire-fraud conspiracy and money-laundering conspiracy for her alleged role in a purported “telemarketing scheme,” federal prosecutors in Manhattan said. Shah’s assistant, Stuart Smith, was also arrested in the supposed scam.
Prosecutors allege that between 2012 and March 2021, the duo “carried out a wide-ranging telemarketing scheme that defrauded hundreds of victims” across the U.S., “many of whom were over age 55.” They allege that Shah and Smith did so by peddling victims “business services.”
“Jennifer Shah, who portrays herself as a wealthy and successful businessperson on ‘reality’ television, and Stuart Smith, who is portrayed as Shah’s ‘first assistant,’ allegedly generated and sold ‘lead lists’ of innocent individuals for other members of their scheme to repeatedly scam,” Manhattan U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss previously remarked in a statement on Shah’s arrest. “In actual reality and as alleged, the so-called business opportunities pushed on the victims by Shah, Smith, and their co-conspirators were just fraudulent schemes, motivated by greed, to steal victims’ money. Now, these defendants face time in prison for their alleged crimes.”
