Teresa Giudice speculates feds 'came after us' because “RHONJ” producers had her pay cash in infamous scene

The reality star says the edited furniture store scene made it look like she paid for over $100,000 in merchandise with cash.

Teresa Giudice is setting the record straight about the infamous Real Housewives of New Jersey season 1 furniture store scene. Giudice reunited with her RHONJ castmates Jacqueline Laurita and Kim D on the latest episode of her Turning the Tables podcast where they talked about the factual and fictional parts of making the series.

An early episode of RHONJ featured Giudice and Laurita going furniture shopping for Giudice's new "dream home." The reality star picked out over $100,000 in "French chateau" furniture and then appeared to pay for all of it in cash. Giudice now says that wasn't exactly how the shopping trip went down.

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"Oh, my God! They were handing you the money!," Laurita exclaimed when Giudice asked on the podcast if she remembered that episode. "The producers were like, 'We think it would be cool if you paid in cash,' but we don’t have this much cash on us," Laurita continued.

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Giudice recalled that she and Laurita had about $500 in cash on them at the time, but the producers allegedly gave her a bunch of smaller bills to make it look like more.

"It showed how much my furniture was, like $140,000 or whatever it was. Then I’m giving out 100-dollar bills. Then they showed the calculator, and it looked like I had all of that money and cash on me," she explained. "I would have had to walk around with two briefcases [to have that much money]."

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The reality star went on to say that she thinks she actually paid for the furniture with a check, but she thinks that footage of paying in cash is partly what instigated federal investigators to take an interest in her and her ex-husband Joe Giudice.

"I think that’s why the government came after us,” she revealed.

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The couple was found guilty of mail, wire, and bankruptcy fraud in 2014. Teresa served 11 months in prison in 2015 for the crimes, while Joe spent 41 months in jail and was deported to Italy in 2018. He now lives in the Bahamas.

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