So listen. If you have to ask “What happened to Subway spokesman Jared Fogle, and why is he so, so in prison right now?” you’re either brushing up on something terrible, or you missed a lot of news stories over the last decade and you’re in for a heck of a surprise. Either way, sorry about this next part.
Starting from the top: As the 1990s came to a close, Indiana University student Jared Fogle decided that it was time to make a change. After years of declining personal care, the young man tipped the scales at over 400 lbs. Driven by a terrible will and a desire to tour the country showing people his old pants, Fogle altered his entire lifestyle. He started walking every day. He walked, and he walked, and on a related note, he began nourishing himself with Subway sandwiches, which, from a cynical standpoint, are food.
The results were staggering. By April of 1999, Fogle had lost over 200 lbs., inspiring a roommate to write up a piece on his transformative weight loss in the school paper. The tale traveled across the country, eventually making it back to Subway HQ, where the decision was made to turn Fogle into the face of the restaurant chain.
Jared Fogle, a lot of sandwiches, and even more bad decisions
Nobody ever went broke in America selling sandwiches that make you skinny, and Fogle’s success was of the meteoric variety. Before long, the “Subway Guy” was as ubiquitous as the “Can You Hear Me Now Guy,” the “I’m A Mac Guy,” and any number of pale, dark-haired spokesmen in collared shirts convincing suburbanites to buy stuff. Fogle toured the country as a representative – not just of Subway, but of the human capacity for diligence, perseverance, and self improvement. As his fame grew, so too did opportunities to cash in on it. Fogle appeared at WWE events, in an episode of Community, and in two entries in the Sharknado franchise, a series which also featured Matt Lauer, which, man. What a batting average those movies had.
Meanwhile, behind the scenes – and this is the part we apologized about earlier – Fogle was taking part in a side venture as an active pedophile and enthusiastic collector of CSEM/CSAM, known more colloquially as child pornography. There’d been smoke in the air for a while, with a Florida journalist having made complaints about Fogle to the FBI as far back as 2007, but it was the April 2015 arrest of Russell Taylor that cinched things for the spokesman. Taylor, the director of Fogle’s anti-youth obesity organization The Jared Foundation, was arrested. It was discovered that he and his wife, Angela Baldwin, had sexually abused children, recorded it, and even installed cameras in children’s rooms for the purposes of being, from a cold, empirical journalistic point of view, basically the worst people imaginable. Files on the couple’s computer led the FBI to Fogle, who had received explicit CSAM material from Taylor and Baldwin. Further investigation uncovered text messages in which Fogle tried to convince an old girlfriend to arrange for her underage cousin to sleep with him, and described all manner of grossness that he’d done to children. Fogle was arrested on July 7, 2015.
Fogle’s attorneys did what they could, and a valiant effort was made to argue that the now super-unemployed former spokesperson had replaced his compulsive eating habit with predatory sexual dysfunction. In essence, this legal defense was on par with telling a beat cop “I know, but I just quit smoking” while actively peeing on the sidewalk and hoping that you’ll get let off with a warning. It was a hell of a swing, but weirdly, it didn’t make Fogle more sympathetic, either — not to the judge, or human beings at large. He was sentenced to 15 years and 8 months in prison, with a minimum of 13 years to be served before the possibility of release on good behavior was to be considered.
Then, almost a decade later in 2024, Fogle popped up in the news once again. Eagle-eyed true crime enthusiasts discovered that the disgraced celebrity was scheduled to be released from prison a year earlier than expected, in 2029. The reasoning for his early release wasn’t anything mind-blowing, but more of an abrasive reminder that time marches mercilessly forward, bringing us closer and closer to the day when Subway Jared walks free once again. Maybe Jimmy John’s will be hiring.