There is little about Marc Fogel’s past that could have predicted he would one day end up in a Russian prison.
An American history teacher who made a career working at international schools across multiple continents, the 63-year-old had been a “happy-go-lucky” person since boyhood, the kind of educator whom students remember fondly their whole lives, said his mother, Malphine Fogel.
In 2012, Fogel, his wife Jane and their two sons moved to Moscow, where Fogel took up a position teaching history at the now-shuttered Anglo-American school. Some of his proudest achievements there were scored on the softball field, where Fogel coached the girls’ team to multiple championships.
That all came to an end in August 2021, when customs officials at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport found about half an ounce of medical marijuana in Fogel’s luggage. Doctors in the United States had prescribed the drugs to treat chronic pain.
Ten months later, the Pennsylvania native was sentenced to 14 years in prison for drug trafficking.
Fogel is now serving one of the longest sentences of Americans held in Russia following a major prisoner swap between Moscow and Western countries earlier this month. That exchange freed, among others, Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former U.S. marine Paul Whelan, who were both given 16 years in separate cases. About half a dozen other Americans remain behind bars in Russia.
In interviews, his mother and sister Anne said they were outraged when they heard Fogel was left out of the swap.
“It just seems like an unbelievable occurrence to think that they released all those prisoners and they didn’t include Marc,” his mother said by phone from her home outside Pittsburgh.
No one, though, was more crushed than Fogel himself.
“It just took the heart right out of him when he heard,” his mother said. “He’s just shattered.”