‘Subway’ Jared Fogle speaks for first time from prison: ‘I royally screwed up’
Pervy pitchman Jared Fogle feels remorse for all the damage he has done — to his career.
The jailed pedophile and former face of Subway penned a letter from prison that cited an inspirational quote from “The Shawshank Redemption” and detailed his workout routine.
“I really royally screwed up to wind up where I am,” the father of two said in a hand-written letter dated Nov. 7, 2021, and exclusively obtained by The Post. “I was selfish and entitled.”
Fogle — who prosecutors said had some 400 child-porn videos in his possession — pleaded guilty in August 2015 to a child pornography charge and paying for sex with an underage girl after traveling from Indiana to New York City. He was ordered to pay $1.4 million in restitution to 14 victims.
He is now serving 15 years and eight months at the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Englewood, Colo.
Fogle, now 44, was lambasted in 2015 when a Post cover infamously declared: “Enjoy a foot long in jail.”
This is the first time he has spoken about his life behind bars.
He wrote that he is inspired by a line from the movie “The Shawshank Redemption.”
“Something like, ‘You can either get busy living or get busy dying’ when you are sent to prison. I’ve done everything I can to get busy living and make the most of this unwanted experience.”
Former Assistant US Attorney Steven DeBrota, one of the prosecutors in Fogle’s trial, told The Post that Fogle’s “unwanted experience” was not caused by “a single mistake or bad decision — [it was] the result of a long-standing and persistent pattern of criminal behavior.”
“The case will always be about [Fogle’s] victims, not his prior successes in life, his latest characterization of his actions or his present situation,” added DeBrota, who served 30 years as a federal prosecutor and is now vice president and chief counsel at the National White Collar Crime Center.
Fogle, who wrote that he thinks “about all the people I’ve let down every single day, especially my family,” has a son and a daughter, now 11 and 9, with his second wife, Kathleen McLaughlin. After he was busted on the sex charges, she announced she was seeking a divorce, which was finalized three months later.
The former Subway spokesman rose to fame in 1999 with his claim to have defeated obesity by exercising and slashing his daily calorie intake to 2,000 from 10,000. Lunch was the chain’s 6-inch turkey sub, a bag of baked potato chips and a Diet Coke. For dinner, he had a foot-long veggie sub and a Diet Coke. Fogle piled up an estimated $15 million fortune appearing in Subway’s advertising campaigns.
As for his prison diet, he wrote: “I try to avoid too much junk food. I snack on granola bars and protein bars. I feel really good physically and mentally.”
Fogle added that he is currently in top shape due to a “rigorous fitness” regimen. “I run four to five miles every day and am the most healthy and in shape I’ve ever been,” he wrote. “We don’t have a lot of control over our daily lives in prison but working out is one of the things I can control. I currently weigh 180 pounds.”
At his heaviest, in 1998, when he was a student at Indiana University, Fogle weighed 425 pounds. He claimed to have lost some 245 pounds on his Subway diet.
A fellow prisoner had reported that Fogle was studying culinary arts in prison, but that is “wrong,” the former Subway pitchman wrote. “Covid protocols [over] the past two years have limited the programming being offered here at F.C.I. Englewood.”
In a December 2020 outbreak, more than half the inmates at the facility contracted the virus.
Fogle wrote that he spends his free time watching college and NFL football, “which makes the weekends fly by.” He said he also reads the New York Times every day and likes “all kinds of books, especially historical fiction. I still love to laugh and smile.
“I really miss the small things like walking barefoot on carpet, sleeping on a nice comfy mattress, eating with real silverware, having access to a microwave … All I can do is learn from my mistakes to be a better man when I get released in a few years.”
Fogle, who has repeatedly fought to have his sentence reduced, wrote that he must serve at least 85 percent of his sentence. The earliest he can walk is March 24, 2029, according to Federal Bureau of Prisons records. He will have to register as a sex offender.
According to prosecutors during his trial, Fogle solicited escorts to “provide him with access to minors as young as 14 to 15 years.”
“I very much look forward to re-starting my life and enjoying every moment with my family who have stood by and supported me,” Fogle wrote. “I’m so lucky to have them.”
