INDIANAPOLIS (AP) – Former Subway spokesman Jared Fogle is due in federal court Thursday to learn how much time he’ll spend in prison on child porn and sex-crime charges.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Walton Pratt was scheduled to sentence Fogle after formally accepting his plea to one count each of travelling to engage in illicit sexual conduct with a minor and distribution and receipt of child pornography.
Fogle agreed in August to plead guilty to the charges following a July raid on his suburban Indianapolis home. The resulting criminal case destroyed his career with Subway.
Prosecutors are seeking a 12 -year sentence, while Fogle’s attorneys have asked for five years. But federal judges have wide discretion, and Pratt could go beyond the prosecution’s recommendation. The child-porn charge carries a maximum 20 years in prison, and the sex with a minor count is punishable by up to 30 years.
The 38-year-old Fogle admitted paying for sex with girls as young as 16 and receiving child pornography produced by Russell Taylor, the former director of The Jared Foundation, a nonprofit Fogle started to raise awareness and money to fight childhood obesity.