While reality stars having brushes with the law certainly isn’t anything new, Real Housewives of New Jersey icon Teresa Giudice and her criminal conviction is easily one of the most severe. While wealthy celebrities can often get a simple slap on the wrist compared to the average Joe, Giudice is a rare example of a public figure who served hard time, when she was granted a lengthy 15-month sentence, staying in prison from 2015 to 2016.
What did Teresa Giudice do to break the law?
Teresa Giudice’s husband at the time was Giuseppe “Joe” Giudice, an entrepreneur and businessman born in Italy and raised in the U.S., with whom she shared four daughters. According to Women’s Health, the couple had a troubled financial history before Teresa began starring on RHONJ in 2009, with several loans to their name, filing bankruptcy the same year. Around this point, the two were said to have greatly exaggerated their joint income – a scheme that extended to concealing increased assets, with Joe evading taxes between 2004 and 2008.
In 2013, the couple were charged of “a conspiracy to defraud lenders and illegally obtain mortgages and other loans as well as allegedly hiding assets and income during a bankruptcy case,” according to the U.S. Department of Justice, citing wire, mail, and bank fraud – on top of Joe’s tax evasion.
Joe and Teresa were ultimately sentenced to 41 and 15 months in prison, respectively. The sentencing was partially influenced by the couple’s failure to provide proper probation and asset reports, as well as other financial information, falling $75,000 short of listed items, according to People. The judge presiding over the case also expressed a desire to “send a message” over their failure to prepare, noting their poor filings “offended the court”.
Giudice’s time in prison
Teresa and Joe served non-simultaneous sentences, citing childcare responsibilities. Teresa began her sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut, in January 2015, and was released early in December of that year. Joe began his 41-month sentence in March 2016, serving in full.
Reflecting on the experience, Teresa said her time locked up was a turning point in her life. She worked as a cook inside the correctional facility, and began practicing yoga and meditation as part of her daily routine. Giudice sites the structure she developed while inside, something she developed to clear her mind while missing her daughters, allowed her to master her mental health and re-direct the trajectory of her life, as she reflected on in her memoir, Standing Strong. When she was released from prison, Teresa became a certified yoga instructor.
What happened after?
Joe was released from Allenwood Low Federal Correctional Institution in Allenwood, Pennsylvania in March 2019, before being directly transferred to an ICE detention center. In October, Joe agreed to return to his birth country of Italy ahead of his deportation, with the couple announcing their separation in December of that year.
Teresa and her children unsuccessfully petitioned then-President Donald Trump, who the Giudices supported politically during his 2016 election campaign, but the plea – along with a request for a character reference letter during Joe’s trial – was rejected.
Teresa remarried after her divorce from Joe was finalized in 2020, although the pair remained close, with Teresa happily taking her daughters to Italy to visit their father, and later the Bahamas when the businessman moved once more. Her now-husband is another entrepreneur, Luis Ruelas, with the couple tying the knot in 2022.
As of season fourteen, Teresa is still a housewife on RHONJ, and is now the sole original cast member of the long-running reality series. Teresa’s redemption tour has included some pit stops on other reality shows, with a brief stint on season 15 of Dancing with the Stars and the upcoming second season of House of Villains.
The New Jersey native has also turned into somewhat of a self-help guru, publishing two books since her prison stint: Turning the Tables: From Housewife to Inmate and Back Again in 2016, and Standing Strong in 2017. She has been a huge proponent of her prison-era yoga and transcendental meditation, with a web series in collaboration with Women’s Health teaching viewers how to de-stress and “calm your s**t”. She has even attempted to recruit some of her RHONJ co-stars to take the stress levels of their environment down a peg and practice some zen with her, as seen on the show.
Published: Aug 1, 2024 05:39 am