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Former Subway spokesman's ex-wife: Subway knew of crimes

October 25, 2016

Numerous sources, including this one from CNN Money, are reporting that former Subway pitchman Jared Fogle’s ex-wife has filed suit against the chain, claiming top Subway executives knew about Fogle’s pedophilia as far back as 2004, but failed to notify authorities at the time. 

The suit, filed by Katie McLaughlin after she divorced Fogle following his guilty plea to federal child porn and sex with minors charges, alleges she and her children suffered emotional distress because Fogle’s crimes were not made public before her marriage to him in 2010. When contacted this afternoon by this site for further comment via email, Subway spokesman, Matt Jordan said, "As this is pending legal action, we cannot provide comment."

The suit alleges that a Subway franchisee, Cindy Mills, called Subway’s then-CEO Jeff Moody in 2008, to relay that Fogle had told her "he really liked them young," and that he had previously had sex with children between the ages of 9 and 16. The suit states that Moody stopped Mills from talking further about the information involving Fogle and told her, "Please don't tell me anymore. Don't worry, he has met someone. She is a teacher and he seems to love her very much, and we think she will keep him grounded." 

That "teacher” was McLaughlin, according to the suit, which also states that Moody told Mills he had heard similar information about Fogle previously. 

"Subway made a terribly misguided assumption that Jared's marrying Katie would correct Jared's pedophilia behavior," the suit states. 

The legal action also specifies that following the exchange with Mills, Subway launched a campaign with Fogle to fight childhood obesity, which put Fogle in numerous elementary schools and used photos of Fogle, McLaughlin and their children without authorization.

Fogle is in federal prison serving 15 years for his crimes. He also agreed to pay 14 of his victims $100,000 each.

"A responsible corporation would take immediate action when hearing of this behavior, even if it was only allegations," McLaughlin states in the suit. 

At a Monday press conference, she said the only way she could unearth the details about her ex-husband and his crimes was to file suit to get legal leeway to obtain the information needed to get to the truth of the situation. 

"Subway failed every test of corporate responsibility in its response to each of these complaints. … A lot of questions have come up, questions my kids are going to ask me some day. I will not lie to my kids and I want to be able to answer those questions," she said.