From obesity to duplicity: Jared's fall to Earth

The plan that Jared "The Subway Guy" Fogle announced in 2008 was like so many things about him: big, inspirational and, it would turn out, false.

A top celebrity spokesman worth $15 million, Fogle said he wanted to promote more than sandwiches. His non-profit foundation would distribute $2 million to schools and community organizations to fight the condition that had plagued Fogle for years, childhood obesity.

But the Jared Foundation has not issued a single grant, records show.

From 2009 through 2013, the foundation spent just $73,000 a year on average. Sixty percent of the money went to the executive director's salary, and 26% is unaccounted for, according to foundation tax records.

The foundation also hasn't paid the State of Indiana a $5 annual registration fee since 2008, the year the Jared Fogle Healthy Lifestyle Nationwide School Grant Program was supposed to begin. Delinquency notices were ignored. In 2012, the Indiana Secretary of State dissolved the foundation, though the IRS still recognizes it.

"If Jared was really interested in helping children through his foundation, he could have gotten more money," said Daniel Borochoff, president of CharityWatch, which analyzes and rates charities. "As with a lot of celebrities, the charity appears to be more about image-enhancement than charitable deeds."

Fogle, who turns 38 on Sunday, is now largely confined to his 13-room mini-mansion outside Indianapolis awaiting sentencing on charges of receiving and distributing child pornography and having sex with minors. His second wife, with whom Fogle has two preschool-age children, has started divorce proceedings. His sartorial signature is no longer a pair of size-60 blue jeans but a GPS monitor that tracks his movements outside the house.

"I don't think he's going anywhere," federal prosecutor Steven DeBrota said in announcing a plea deal Wednesday that will result in a prison sentence of five to 12½ years.

The disclosure that Fogle patronized adult sex workers, viewed child pornography and had sex with minors has shattered a multi-million-dollar image built on his everyman sincerity and ongoing struggle with weight. Many of Fogle's more than 100,000 Facebook followers defaced his now-removed page with taunts about revenge that awaits him in prison.

"This was a long pattern, an ongoing pattern," Chuck Cohen of the Indiana State Police said in an interview.

Court records, public appearances and interviews show the depth of Fogle's pathology, which appears to have emerged as he was divorcing his first wife and deepened as he remarried and became a father.

A federal charging document states that Fogle first obtained child porn in March 2011 from a friend, who delivered the images via text messages and a thumb drive. At the time, Fogle's second wife was pregnant with their first child. Their son was born in September 2011. Some of the child-porn images showed children as young as 6 in sex acts.

The Fogles' second child, a daughter, was born in 2013 – the same year Jared Fogle had sex with a 17-year-old girl, according to charging papers.

"He's really just a sick man. He has no remorse. He has no guilt," said Rochelle Herman-Walrond, who says she befriended Fogle in 2007 during his visits to Sarasota, Fla., where she interviewed him for her Sarasota radio show, "Health Beat of America."

Herman-Walrond said Fogle spoke openly to her about his interest in sex with underage girls - and it concerned her to the point that she contacted the FBI. The bureau would not comment. Nonetheless, she also was drawn to Fogle and his story about losing 245 pounds in college, largely through a diet of Subway sandwiches.

"He was a nice guy," Herman-Walrond said. "His story was interesting. He went from nothing to being a spokesperson for a major corporation just for losing weight."

The story, initially told in 1999 by the student newspaper at Indiana University, made Fogle a viral sensation when Subway aired its first Jared ad in 2000. Fogle is credited with helping double Subway's annual sales, to more than $8 billion. An advertising research firm said in 2013 that the Fogle ads were the most effective in the entire U.S. restaurant industry.

Subway says it has severed all ties with Fogle. In an interview Friday, DeBrota, the prosecutor, said investigators found no evidence that Subway "had any idea" of Fogle's illegal activities, and that Fogle told investigators that Subway officials "didn't know what I was doing."

Fogle entered the sexual underworld in 2007, somewhat benignly, by scrolling through websites that advertise escorts and erotic services, and arranging paid sexual encounters with adults, the federal document states.

At the time, Fogle was in the midst of a divorce from his first wife, Elizabeth A. Fogle, who filed divorce papers in March 2006 and moved out of their three-bedroom house in an Indianapolis suburb. The couple had married in October 2001.

In September 2005, the Fogles and a third person named Trent Cate formed a business that sold items on eBay for people who lacked the time or know-how to do it themselves. Elizabeth Fogle talked to a journalist about the business in September 2006, at the same time her attorney was arranging mediation sessions.

The divorce record gives no indication of the Fogles' problems. Elizabeth Fogle returned to using her maiden name and has made no public comment about her ex-husband.

Fogle's descent appears to have deepened after the Jared Foundation in 2009 hired an executive director named Russell Taylor, 43, a friend of Fogle's with an apparent penchant for bestiality and child porn, according to court papers. The two had met while Taylor was a youth-market director for the American Heart Association based in Indianapolis.

Taylor is in jail on child-pornography charges, including allegations that he secretly videotaped and photographed boys and girls in his house using devices hidden in bedrooms and a bathroom. Taylor told authorities he used the cameras to guard against theft.

The Indiana State police were tipped off by a woman who was a friend of Taylor and his wife, and had saved text messages in which Taylor discussed child pornography and having sex with a horse, court papers said.

Authorities say Taylor started sharing pornographic images and videos of children with Fogle in March 2011, and also gave Fogle child porn produced outside the U.S. The evidence gathered from Taylor led authorities to Fogle.

Around the same time, Fogle began to explore sex with minors, taking advantage of his frequent trips away from home and high-class accommodations.

In early November 2012, Subway put Fogle up at New York City's Plaza Hotel, with its $2,000-a-night suites and sweeping views of Central Park, to promote Team Subway at the New York City Marathon. At a media event two days before the marathon, Fogle stood arm-in-arm onstage with the two sisters and the mother of Olympics superstar Michael Phelps, a fellow Subway pitchman.

The next day, Fogle shifted his attention, paying a 17-year-old girl to have sex with him at the Plaza, according to the federal charging documents.

The day after that – marathon Sunday – Fogle sent the girl text messages offering her a finder's fee if she could arrange a sexual encounter with another underage girl. Fogle said would accept a 16-year-old, but said the younger the girl, the better.

When Fogle returned to New York in early January, he stayed at the Ritz Carlton, near the site of the former World Trade Center. Fogle has posted somber photographs of himself standing by Ground Zero honoring those who died on Sept. 11.

But on this visit, Fogle had sex with another 17-year-old girl.

As investigators from the FBI, Indiana State Police and Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department closed in Fogle, he fought to maintain his image.

When Russell Taylor was arrested in late April, Fogle pronounced himself "shocked" and fired Taylor from the Jared Foundation. Although Fogle took a month-long hiatus from Twitter, he resumed his regular exclamation-point-filled postings in June, with a link to a list of the "Top 10 Healthy Foods."

On July 7, authorities raided Fogle's house, loading documents, electronics and other items into an evidence truck parked in the driveway. Fogle has responded with an uncharacteristic approach: silence.

His final Twitter post, dated July 5, expressed gratitude to a sports radio show for having him on to discuss a NASCAR race and may serve as an epitaph to Fogle's career: "Great talking to you! Thanks."

CONTRIBUTING: Mark Alesia of the Indianapolis Star. Kwiatkowski and Cook also write for the Indianapolis Star.