Commercial Stars Who Ended Up In Jail

The United States is known as the land of opportunity — the place where supposedly anyone can go out and achieve their dreams. And in America, reaching celebrity status often comes with an added bonus: The sudden arrival of commercial deals. The chance to front ads for huge brands offering life-changing money to promote their goods and services while at the height of fame.

But commercial deals typically rest not just on the fame of the figure fronting the ad, but also on their reputation. For consumers to buy a product, they must also trust it, and that extends to trusting the person who is trying to sell it to them. As such, when stars face personal scandals, particularly those that involve crime and prison time, it can lead to the loss of commercial contracts and the millions of dollars that they represent. Here are the most high-profile commercial falls from grace, and a couple of cases that show how the passage of time can sometimes work wonders.

One of the most notorious stories of a commercial star who faced an almighty downfall in the public eye was that of Canadian Jared Fogle. The advertisements he fronted for the fast food chain Subway maintained that he had lost 245 pounds from a diet consisting mainly of its sandwiches. Fogle reportedly drove a large portion of the company's growth from when he first started appearing in its ads in 2000.

There was some early controversy about the claims Fogle put forward in the ads. Critics noted that Subway sandwiches, which customers can have made to their exact specifications, are not often as healthy as the commercials suggested. But Fogle's Subway meal ticket was rescinded in 2015 when news broke that he had been arrested for child sex crimes. His arrest was a blow for the fast food brand, with commentators wondering how the company, which was already struggling to maintain market dominance, could recover. As the years have passed, the brand has pivoted to other stars for its ads, and Fogle remains behind bars, where he's serving a 15-year prison sentence.

Many people around the world are looking for a guru to help them through the difficulties of life, and for many Americans in the late 2000s and early 2010s, that guru was Kevin Trudeau. An author and businessman who was a near-constant presence on late night TV, whose silver-tongued charm helped him to sell a range of products including dubious pain relief devices and books specializing in subjects as varied as weight loss, memory training, finance, and debt management. What his customers didn't know, however, was that Trudeau had once spent two years behind bars having been found guilty of credit card fraud. But that wasn't the end of Trudeau's crimes. Throughout the years of his fame, he and his companies had to pay off numerous settlements and fines due to the dubious claims he made in his books and infomercials.

In 2009, he was ordered by a federal judge to pay a fine of more than $37 million as a result of misrepresenting his latest diet plan, outlined in his book "The Weight Loss Cure 'They' Don't Want You To Know About." Though investigators uncovered that Trudeau had made potentially hundreds of millions through his grifts, he claimed to have no assets of his own and essentially refused to pay the fine. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2014 for criminal contempt. Authorities are still attempting to coerce Trudeau to pay the money he owes.

Martha Stewart was once the squeaky clean queen of American homemaking. She rose to prominence through her catering business in the late 1970s, and in the years that followed, she became a bestselling author through the likes of her debut, "Entertaining," and books like "Martha Stewart's Christmas" that followed. By the 1990s, she was at the helm of an enormous media empire, with her own magazines, TV show, radio show, and countless commercial deals. Her ad work built on skills she had learned as a teenager, when she first starred in commercials for Unilever and, later, for a cigarette brand.

That all threatened to come crashing down in 2002, three years after she launched Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Inc. on the New York Stock Exchange. It was revealed that Stewart was being investigated for insider trading, and she was later indicted for numerous crimes including fraud and obstruction of justice. She was sentenced to five months in prison in February 2004, though she seamlessly returned to public life and commercials — including the one above — following her release.

The murder case against former NFL superstar O.J. Simpson was one of the most talked about news stories of recent decades. The "trial of the century" saw him accused of having murdered his ex-wife, Nicole Brown, and her friend, Ron Goldman, on June 12, 1994. Having received widespread media coverage at the time — including a remarkable live broadcast of a police car chase he was involved in before surrendering to authorities — the trial and Simpson's life in general have remained pop cultural talking points ever since.

But the Simpson case has also been used as a prism through which to examine American society at the time. Notably, the 2016 documentary series "O.J.: Made in America" gave a new generation of viewers an incredible insight into the story's many twists and turns. And one revelation that the series provides to those who weren't there at the time is the incredible celebrity profile Simpson enjoyed before his trial. His first endorsement deal came in 1970, when he signed with General Motors to the tune of $250,000 (around $2 million in 2024). He later signed a lucrative and long-lasting contract with the car rental company Hertz, and Simpson memorably starred in its "Superstar in Rent-a-Car" campaign.

The murder trial wasn't the last of his high-profile troubles. In 2008, he was imprisoned after being found guilty of a botched robbery attempt and was paroled in 2017. He died of cancer on April 10, 2024.

If you or someone you know may be the victim of child abuse, please contact the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child (1-800-422-4453) or contact their live chat services.

If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).