Andy DehnartBad Girls Club season 14 cast member Shannade Clermont, who was known as “The Power Princess” on the show, has been arrested and charged with aggravated identity theft, wire fraud, and access device fraud—all involving a dead man who she allegedly visited for a “prostitution date” and then used his debit cards to make more than $20,000 in purchases over several months.
Shannade, who’s now 24, was in the Bad Girls Club house with her twin sister, Shannon back in 2015. The show, produced by Bunim-Murray productions, was allegedly about helping “bad girls” improve their lives—the could “perhaps embark on a journey of transformation,” according to Oxygen’s press release for that season.
But really, the show was just a convenient way of stocking a reality show house full of volatile personalities and profiting off of their violence and bad behavior.
Oxygen described Shannade and her twin sister like this:
“Never the ones to bite their tongues, identical twins Shannon and Shannade Clermont are double the trouble. Raised in New York City, they have grown accustomed to a lavish lifestyle and idolize the fashion and modeling industries. They are two peas in a pod and do not seek approval from anyone else. Known for having zero filters, these hot tempered co-dependent sisters want to learn to let others in rather than shutting everyone out.”
The producers and network got what they wanted from the sisters, as they were removed from the show along with another woman, Jelaminah, for starting a violent fight, destroying others’ property, and then trashing the house. Those events were shown in episode seven.
A Department of Justice press release mentions her time on reality TV, and U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman explicitly referenced it:
“As alleged, Shannade Clermont, a former cast member of the Bad Girls Club, lived up to her reality series reputation. She allegedly stole debit card information from a man found dead—the victim of a drug overdose—in his Manhattan apartment and used his identity to make tens of thousands of dollars in fraudulent purchases. Thanks to the skilled investigative work of the NYPD, Clermont’s new reality is federal prosecution for her alleged nefarious conduct.”
The release says that she allegedly “stole and fraudulently used the debit card information of a man she had visited for a prostitution date and who was found dead in his apartment the next morning from a drug overdose.”
The Department of Justice explained how Shannade came to be arrested. The case began with the death of a man in early 2017:
The NYPD and the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York have been investigating the overdose death of a male individual (the “Victim”), who was found dead on the morning of February 1, 2017, in his apartment at 250 East 53rd Street in Manhattan, New York (the “Victim Apartment”). During the course of that investigation, law enforcement learned that CLERMONT visited the Victim for a prostitution date at the Victim Apartment the previous evening (January 31, 2017), and used the Victim’s debit card information to make or attempt to make more than $20,000 in fraudulent purchases during the months following the Victim’s death. Specifically, CLERMONT stole the information for two debit cards of the Victim found in his wallet in the Victim Apartment, and used that stolen debit card information for, among things, payments of her rent and phone bills, flight purchases, and several online purchases of thousands of dollars of clothing and other merchandise.
The full complaint has been unsealed and is on the Department of Justice’s web site: U.S. v. Shennade Clermont [PDF].