We still have no answers about when The Real Housewives of New Jersey will be back or who will be in the cast, but we do have one long-standing question about the series answered: how Teresa and her ex-husband Joe Giudice found themselves being investigated by the IRS -- and it's so not what any of us expected.
Although Teresa Giudice has spent several years blaming the investigation on her brother, Joe Gorga, and her sister-in-law, Melissa Gorga, Investigation Discovery's Hollywood Demons recently revealed the truth about how the investigation that landed the two of them behind bars began.
Melissa Gorga was not the source of Teresa Giudice's IRS investigation
Investigation Discovery's Hollywood Demons episode about The Real Housewives franchise covered a variety of dark topics from the Bravo franchise, including Taylor Armstrong's abusive marriage being featured on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and Teresa Giudice's IRS investigation and eventual 15-month prison sentence.
One of the people interviewed by Investigation Discovery for the Hollywood Demons episode was Jonathan Larsen, the director of IRS field operations. According to Jonathan Larsen, the real source of the IRS investigation into Teresa Giuidice and her ex-husband wasn't Joe and Melissa Gorga or Caroline Manzo as she's been claiming but Teresa Giudice herself.
"In 2012, one of the case agents of IRS Criminal Investigation happened to be watchingThe Real Housewives of New Jersey," Jonathan Larsen said during the episode and went on to explain that the agency started looking into the Giudice family's finances because of the amount of money that Teresa Giudice would regularly spend on the show.
Jonathan Larsen went into some more details about what exactly the investigation that landed Teresa Giudice in prison uncovered.
In the episode, he revealed that although she had exposed herself slightly on RHONJ, it definitely sounds like their shady financial dealings were likely to come to light eventually regardless of whether or not she was on Bravo spending six figures to buy some furniture.
"We identified one loan application way before the TV show. She supplied pay stubs. That job did not exist. She had applied for another mortgage, and this time she claimed she was a realtor making $15,000 a month, and when in fact it was totally fabricated," Jonathan Larsen revealed on Hollywood Demons.
He went on to share that the two of them had failed to file tax returns for several years before they were even on RHONJ and that the two of them had once filed for bankruptcy but had lied about the amount of money they were making on the filing.
In 2014, Joe and Teresa Giudice each pled guilty to bank, mail, wire, and bankruptcy fraud and were sentenced to prison time with Teresa Giudice getting a 15-month sentence and her ex-husband getting a 41-month sentence.
Hollywood Demons is currently available for streaming on Max or through a cable subscription that includes Investigation Discovery. The Real Housewives of New Jersey is currently on pause, but episodes of previous seasons are currently available for streaming on Peacock.