Teresa Giudice says she never expected to go to jail after the fraud case that led to her 11-month prison sentence, and she is revisiting that stretch of her life in a new interview. She said the case felt like something she would have to work through, not something that would end with prison.
Giudice spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about the period that began when she and Joe Giudice were under investigation and continued through the years that followed. She said she kept filming Real Housewives of New Jersey while the legal trouble was unfolding in 2014, when the family faced a federal indictment tied to bankruptcy, mail, wire and bank fraud. In March 2014, she and Joe entered a plea deal. Teresa was later sentenced to 11 months, while Joe served 41 months before being deported after his sentence.
She said the first instinct was to keep moving. “I’m always a mom first. I always want to protect my children over anything,” she said, describing how she wanted to keep filming even as the case was building. She also said she did not grasp the scale of what was ahead. “I really never in a million years thought I would go to jail,” she said, adding that if someone had offered her $40 million and asked whether she would end up in prison, she would have said no.
That is where her account and the outcome split. Giudice says she did nothing wrong and that she was only at a closing for a refinance on a home, putting her “John Hancock” on the dotted line. She says she was made an example of because she was a celebrity, and that everyone around her knew she had nothing to do with Joe’s business or his finances. The court reached a different result, and filming paused while she served her sentence.
The story did not end there. Season 7 picked up on the morning of her release, Joe left the country in 2019, and the two divorced a year later. Giudice says she will go into more detail on The Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Trip: Roaring 20th, a nine-episode season that kicks off Sunday, August 9. With the Real Housewives franchise marking its 20th anniversary and Giudice also appearing on Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test, the old case is back in view because she is still the one telling it, and she is still insisting the ending never made sense to her.
