On Aug. 13, 2021, Marc and Jane Fogel pulled away from their white colonial-style home in Oakmont to drive to New York City.
There, they boarded a plane to Moscow to begin their final year teaching at the Anglo-American School, an elite institution built for the children of western diplomats.
But when the couple landed, Russian authorities detained Marc, seizing from him less than an ounce of marijuana he had been prescribed in Pittsburgh to alleviate severe back pain. A judge convicted Marc of drug smuggling and sentenced him to prison.
So began an excruciating ordeal that kept him in Russian custody for 1,277 days.
On Feb. 11, President Donald Trump’s administration secured Marc’s release and brought him home.
This is Marc’s story.
CHAPTER TWO: THE TRIAL
At 8 a.m., Aug. 14, 2021, Irina Pigman was at her Florida home when a Facebook Messenger alert popped up on her phone.
It was from her friend, Marc Fogel, a teacher in Moscow.
“Please help. I got arrested at Sheremetyevo airport.”
Airport police, tipped off that Marc would be carrying contraband, found marijuana in his luggage when he landed in Russia’s capital. Marc had a prescription for the drug, used to ease terrible back pain, but a doctor’s note didn’t matter in the face of the country’s strict drug laws.
It made sense to reach out to Irina. She had grown up in Moscow and spoke Russian and English fluently.
Her husband, Bill, owned the bus company that ferried students to the elite Anglo-American School where Marc and his wife, Jane, taught. And when the Pigmans weren’t in Florida, they were living across the street from the Fogels in Moscow.
Irina immediately woke Bill. Time was of the essence. They were sure Marc wouldn’t be allowed to have his phone for much longer.
“What should I do?” Marc asked.
Contact the U.S. Embassy, Bill suggested. And talk to the school.
Marc balked. He worried about losing his job.
But Bill knew what awaited Marc in Russia’s criminal justice system would be much worse.
Worst-case scenario
For the next two days, as the Pigmans prepared to head to Moscow for the start of the school year, they worried.
After their flight arrived on Aug. 17, the first thing they did was go to the Fogels’ apartment on Kutuzovsky Avenue to see Jane.
“She was distraught,” Irina recalled. “She didn’t know what to do.”
The three of them tried to figure out how to help Marc. Jane explained that a meeting was scheduled with an attorney in the next day or two.
Outside of Marc losing his job — which happened almost immediately — Irina thought the worst-case scenario would be deportation.
But in an ominous sign, Marc already had been moved to a Moscow detention center known as SIZO No. 5.
He remained there for 31 days — half of that in solitary confinement. Guards allowed him to leave his cold, concrete-block cell only once a week to shower.
All Marc could think about was what had happened. He felt traumatized.
He spent his days lying about, staring at the walls and walking the eight paces from the door of his cell to the wall. A jail librarian brought him books in English, providing a temporary escape.
Marc was not permitted to see his wife. Only his lawyer could visit. Packages and letters — written in Russian — were acceptable; phone calls were not.
Maximum sentence
In the U.S., states require a prompt initial appearance before a judge. Not so in Russia. Marc’s first court appearance didn’t happen until Oct. 4, 2021, more than seven weeks after his arrest.
Jane had been afraid to come to court, but Irina coaxed her to attend a proceeding 10 days later. When court officials wanted to bar her, Irina convinced the judge to let Jane in.
Marc and Jane talked and cried. That 45 minutes would be the last time they would see each other on Russian soil.
Less than a week later, Jane returned to America at the urging of the U.S. Embassy, leaving Irina as one of Marc’s only lifelines in Russia.
As a professional translator who also speaks French and Swedish, Irina thought she could help Marc. She received permission to translate his court proceedings, allowing her to visit him when he met with his attorney.
During these legal visits, Marc was allowed to have a pen and paper. Occasionally, he wrote notes in English on topics that he didn’t want the guards to overhear and held them up to the glass for Irina to read. Often, they were the names of politicians he wanted his family to contact for help.
About a week after Marc’s arrest, Irina went to the detention center for the first time. They used a telephone to speak through a glass partition. Marc was still wearing the clothes he had been arrested in.
“It was a completely different person. He was devastated,” she said. “When he saw me, he was in shock, and he cried.”
Irina translated for Marc what the attorney said could be his maximum sentence — 16 years.
He collapsed.
‘Targeted operation’
By late 2021, the Fogel family decided that the first attorney they had contacted, the one who had joined Marc as police searched his apartment, was not the right choice.
Marc’s sister, Lisa Hyland, who now lives in O’Hara, reached out to folks in Pittsburgh as she tried to find someone to help.
She contacted Dave Fawcett, a well-known attorney and former classmate at Carnegie Mellon University.
Fawcett lived in Oakmont and knew the Fogels, having coached their sons in baseball when they lived in the community years earlier.
Fawcett’s first thought was Sasha Phillips, a lawyer he had worked with at Reed Smith.
Phillips, an artist who studied painting in graduate school, came to the U.S. from Russia in 1993 and earned her law degree at the University of Pittsburgh.
“She was a perfect fit,” Fawcett said.
By late August, Phillips agreed to represent the family.
Initially, she thought getting Marc out of custody would be quick, given that the marijuana he was arrested with had been medically prescribed.
“We thought it was a matter of a couple weeks to clarify this mistake, this glitch in the system,” Phillips said. “But as we started pulling all of these threads, we realized that this was a very targeted operation.”
When Russian authorities received the tip about Marc, they used that to disgrace the Anglo-American School they had been pushing to close, Phillips said.
She used her connections in Moscow to find Marc new lawyers: Dmitry Ovsyannikov, who had a background in civil litigation, and Sergey Bychkov, an expert in criminal defense.
The first time they met Marc in the SIZO in early 2022, they had to play a kind of quiz game with him, answering questions to reassure him that they really had been hired by his family and were not agents of the Russian government.
Ovsyannikov said his client struck him as optimistic — an outlook Marc kept throughout the months as they prepared for trial.
‘Great propaganda’
In January 2022, the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs released two videos to the public about Marc’s case.
One showed his arrival at the airport and the luggage search. The other showed officers scouring the Anglo-American School.
Investigators headed to Marc’s office in Room 4039, where agents rifled through paperwork but found no evidence. A close-up shot showed a logo familiar to any Pittsburgher — a UPMC envelope bearing Marc’s mailing address in Moscow.
The release of the videos, Phillips said, was intended to foment hostility against Marc. Russian authorities spun the story, claiming to local media that he was operating a drug cartel and selling drugs to students.
“I think they said it 20 times during that video (about Marc), ‘who is corrupting poor little children and bringing drugs from the United States,’ ” Phillips said. “It was such a defamatory statement without any basis whatsoever, but it was still thrown in together with the video.”
The goal, Phillips said, was to manipulate public sentiment against Marc as well as damage the school’s reputation. Their strategy apparently worked. Russian officials shut down the school in May 2023.
A bad back
Russian police interrogated Marc three times between August 2021 and February 2022. They learned about his bad back, medical marijuana use and work history.
Marc explained he had been a teacher for more than 36 years, and he and his wife had been working in Moscow at the Anglo-American School since 2012.
He talked about his back and hip problems, recounting how a 1991 soccer injury in Mexico led to a dislocated disk that required surgery. Two years later, he had another operation on his back.
The doctors weren’t done. In 2014, surgeons cut out two disks, inserting plates and pins. Four years after that, ongoing back problems led surgeons to replace part of his hip.
“As a result of multiple surgeries, he began experiencing excruciating back pain,” investigators wrote in their notes from the interview. Doctors suggested he take opioids, but Marc refused because of their side effects.
Marc received medical treatment primarily in the United States but had also visited the European Medical Center in Moscow more than 30 times.
Although he told investigators he was first prescribed medical marijuana in July 2021, records showed it was actually 13 months earlier.
In the summer of 2020, Marc consulted a pain specialist in Pittsburgh. He told the officers that she gave him a medical marijuana card and prescription. She suggested Marc use dried marijuana but also liquid hash oil, which would be less detrimental to his lungs.
Marc told the officers he did not buy much, just what the prescription permitted, for use before bed.
It didn’t matter. In Russia, Marc’s prescription was worthless.
Red lane, green lane
Marc told the officers that when he packed to return to Russia that summer, the marijuana had been in a glass container. Not wanting to chance it breaking in his luggage, Marc said, he switched it to the plastic contact lens cases, finding that to be “more practical.”
“He did not intentionally hide the lens box and cartridges, he put them in the suitcase for easy transport,” police said Marc told them. “If he had wanted to hide the objects, he would have found more discreet ways of doing so, for example, in food items such as cheese, or in sporting equipment he was carrying (golf clubs, bicycle parts).”
Marc also told the officers that he had read an article in 2018 in the Moscow Times that said medical marijuana was allowed in Russia during the FIFA World Cup that year. He also learned that the FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup was to be held in 2021, “so he thought the rules for importing marijuana under medical prescriptions would remain the same,” police wrote.
Marc told the officers he expected the marijuana to last him for about one year of intermittent pain relief.
Jane also provided an affidavit describing their final trip to Moscow.
Driving from Pittsburgh to the airport in New York City had been stressful, she explained. A crash on Interstate 80 stalled their trip in a rental car for more than two hours, making what should have been a leisurely drive to New York a panicked one with fears they would miss their flight.
Once on board, Marc hadn’t been able to sleep, and by the time they landed, he had been up for more than 24 hours.
Marc had planned to report to the “red” area at the airport to declare the medical marijuana at customs, she said. But when they arrived, the airport had been renovated and looked unfamiliar.
“As they made their way into the airport building, they noticed they were in a new terminal that they had never been in before, or in all of their nine years coming to Russia,” officers wrote in their report from Jane. “Everything around them was new and unfamiliar, and they did not know very well where they were supposed to go, so they followed the other passengers.”
Marc appeared to be exhausted, Jane said. Her husband was “slow to think, and had trouble answering questions.”
“After receiving her luggage, she did not know where she should go next to get through customs and followed the crowd,” the affidavit said. “She saw no signs for either the ‘green’ or ‘red’ corridor and followed the other passengers.”
They ended up in the “green” area, for passengers who had nothing to declare.
Despite their explanations, Marc’s prescription and efforts by the American Embassy to free him, Marc remained in detention in Moscow for months awaiting the filing of charges.
Finally, on March 14, 2022, an indictment was returned charging him with two counts: drug smuggling on a large scale and possession on a large scale.
According to the 93-page document, Marc arrived at Sheremetyevo International Airport carrying 13 cartridges of hash oil weighing at least 8.86 grams, as well as 10.49 grams of leaf marijuana. Marc contested the amounts, saying he had with him just 10 grams combined, less than a half-ounce.
His attorneys believed Russian authorities upped the total to put Marc over the legal threshold so they could charge him with a “large amount” and potentially increase his sentence.
The indictment spelled out in detail how the marijuana was packaged in the luggage. The dried marijuana was spread out among five contact lens cases, shoved up inside a sneaker and wrapped in a blue bag. The bag and the 13 vape cartridges were all inside Marc’s suitcase.
The document alleged Marc purposely went to the airport’s green corridor instead of the red in an effort to avoid having his luggage searched by customs.
“Thus, Fogel M.H., committed drug smuggling, that is, the illegal movement of drugs across the customs border,” the indictment read.
Unlike in a traditional prosecution of a Russian citizen, explained Ovsyannikov, one of Marc’s lawyers, there were no plea discussions. The government refused to negotiate.
Less than one month later, the trial began.
Trial
On the morning of April 7, 2022, Marc was pulled from his cell at the SIZO and moved to a holding area with other prisoners, packed shoulder to shoulder.
He remained there for a few hours. Men smoked. The stench of urine permeated the space. Eventually, they boarded a prison transport truck to be delivered to their hearings.
Marc made the same trip for every court appearance, sometimes remaining on the transport vehicle until 4 o’clock in the afternoon.
When it was time for his proceedings, Marc either appeared on video or sat in a cage — or sometimes what looked like a fishbowl — in the back of a courtroom. Sometimes, even though the travel lasted several hours, the hearing would take just a few minutes or be canceled entirely.
Unlike in the United States where a defendant has the right to be tried before a jury of his peers, in Russia, Marc’s charges were heard by a single judge.
Over the course of nine trial dates from April to June, about a dozen witnesses testified, primarily for the prosecution.
Among them were investigators from Moscow who said they had received a tip weeks earlier that Marc was expected to bring marijuana into the country; officers from the airport who described the search of Marc’s luggage; the K-9 handler who described her dog alerting to the smell of the marijuana; and experts who testified about the weight of the drugs he carried.
Marc’s translator for most of his court dates was his friend, Irina. Often, during the downtime while they waited for the hearings to start, she spoke to him about what was happening with his family in the U.S., trying to brighten his spirits.
When court was in session, Marc recounted, the judge paid little attention to the evidence being presented, instead spending much of her time during testimony playing on her phone.
Marc’s attorneys were sure he would be convicted. Prosecutors had his admission as evidence of his guilt.
The defense decided to focus on reducing the potential punishment.
“The key issue was about the duration of the imprisonment,” said Ovsyannikov.
The attorneys narrowed in on the issues they believed could impact the sentence.
They attacked the prosecution’s claimed weight of the marijuana, calling an expert who disputed the government’s method for measuring. They also presented mitigating evidence on Marc’s behalf. They cited his personal history as a longtime teacher with a family and no criminal background, and his extensive health history.
Irina remembered translating hundreds of pages of medical records and seeing all of the imaging reports for tests Marc had endured over the years, including X-rays showing the titanium rods and plates in his body.
In the end, none of it mattered.
Marc’s statement
The last witness the judge heard from was the defendant himself.
For months, the attorneys, Marc and his family had discussed what tack he should take in addressing the court. They agreed he should admit having brought the marijuana into Russia, but not with criminal intent.
That morning before the court session started on June 15, 2022, Irina saw Marc’s written statement.
She was shocked.
Every time in the past when Marc had been asked if he admitted his guilt, she said, his answer was no.
“ ‘It was lack of knowledge. It was negligence. I did not know what I was doing. The consequences were not clear to me. I was not aware of it,’ ” she recalled Marc saying.
But now, Marc would be admitting guilt.
“I’m like, ‘What the hell? Why? Why do they want him to say that? That’s crazy. They will put him behind bars forever now,’ ” Irina said.
When Irina arrived in court, she immediately went to Marc’s lawyer and asked what they were doing.
“And he said, ‘We discussed it with the family, and we decided that it would give Marc a better chance of a (lower) sentence if he admits his guilt,’ ” she recalled.
But Irina believed all it would do was show to the court he was admitting he was a criminal. She made her feelings known to the lawyers.
“They said, ‘Ira, please, don’t get into that. Just do your job.’ I said, ‘OK, OK, I trust you know what you’re doing,’ ” she said.
A short time later, Marc stood before the judge and read his five-page, handwritten statement.
“My name is Marc Fogel. I am a U.S. citizen. I will turn 61 next month. My wife and I have been married almost 26 years, and we have two adult sons. We do not have grandchildren, but hope to soon. By the grace of God, my mother is 93 years old. I am her only son,” he began. “I have been a teacher for 36 years and have won multiple awards and have multiple degrees. I love my job, and it has brought great benefit to society, especially in the area of international understanding.”
Marc then described in detail his spinal injuries and four surgeries, including once having bone sawed off his pelvis and grafted into empty spaces in his spine.
Marc told the court that he had always attempted to deal with the pain without the use of medication — through physical therapy, massage, acupuncture, yoga and exercise. In the summer of 2021 — again Marc misstated the year — the pain became so severe that the doctor recommended medical marijuana to alleviate spasms, pain and sleep issues, he said.
“I am not a drug addict who gets high on drugs. It is medicine for a disability,” he continued. “I do not hallucinate or have a change of consciousness. It relaxes my muscles and eases my pain in a hypnotic effect. I repeat: I am not and never have been a drug addict.”
Marc explained that when he arrived at the Moscow airport, he had not slept and was in intense pain.
“I followed the crowd like I had done more than 100 times at (the airport) — a Pavlov’s dog’s conditioning to the green line,” he said. “These are my mistakes, my fault, my guilt. My luggage was searched in my presence, and I admitted it was mine. I have been in jail since that fateful day. I admit I should have known the risk. I was in pain, worried about a long drive, airport stress and an overnight flight. My decision to bring this pain medicine was clouded by these factors. It was stupid, and I have no excuses. I am not a child.
“I believe my justifications are understandable, as I was sick and exhausted. The fateful event ruined a long and distinguished teaching career. I have devastated and shamed my family.”
During the 10 months he was held prior to trial, Marc continued, he had spent many nights in the SIZO hospital receiving injections and medications without the help of a translator to know what they were.
“That is nothing compared to the fact that I have never had a single conversation with anyone in my family,” he said. “This has suffocated my soul.”
Marc told the court that his crime hurt no one but his own loved ones. But as he poured his heart out in the courtroom, he and his team realized the judge was barely listening, spending the time on her cellphone instead.
Marc was so frustrated that, at one point, he stopped speaking and just stood there, waiting to see if she would look up. When she finally did, he continued.
“Esteemed and honorable judge, I appeal to your wisdom and humanity to show leniency in your decision,” he said. “My remorse and embarrassment to this court and to the city, my family, is profound and honest.
“Please understand my suffering to have morally let down my family, friends and former students. Your honor, I am a distinguished teacher, a family man with no record of crime. … This mistake is an exception to my life. For the sake of my family, my responsibility to my 93-year-old mother, I appeal to your sense of justice and your humanity for a most lenient sentence.”
His statement completed, the hearing adjourned. Marc was told he would return the next day to learn his fate.
Verdict
On June 16, 2022, Marc, wearing a blue dress shirt with his hands cuffed in front of him, arrived at the courthouse. He sensed something was off. As soon as the hallway door opened, he was surprised to find a gauntlet of reporters and television cameras.
The media members shouted provocative questions. One asked in English, “Why did you sell drugs to the kids at your school, Marc?”
He was frustrated his attorneys didn’t prepare him for the onslaught.
Marc was hustled into the courtroom and placed in a cage in the back. The court session began with both sides giving brief closing arguments. The prosecution asked for 16 years.
“I didn’t even translate it to Marc,” Irina said. “I didn’t want to stress him out for nothing.”
She and Marc’s attorneys thought that, at worst, the court would sentence him to eight years, giving him a chance at parole.
Judge E.A. Rusakova left the courtroom to deliberate.
She returned 15 minutes later with a 28-page, typed verdict, which she read into the record. Irina tried to keep up, but the judge read so quickly over about 45 minutes that it was impossible.
Rusakova quickly reached her findings.
“Resolved by the court: M.H. Fogel committed drug smuggling,” she declared.
The judge recounted the details of the allegations, including what the prosecutors claimed was the weight of the hash oil and marijuana. She concluded that Marc’s actions were purposeful and criminal. Rusakova found him guilty of possessing a large amount of drugs.
“The defendant M.H. Fogel, who was questioned at the court hearing, fully admitted his guilt under the … Russian Criminal Code and testified that in connection with his spinal injury, namely the presence of a titanium rod, he experiences periodically severe pain,” she said.
Although Rusakova acknowledged his medical conditions, only about one page of her verdict was dedicated to Marc’s mitigation evidence. She cited his medical history, his teaching career, his lack of a criminal record and his explanation that he thought he was permitted to bring the marijuana into the country with a prescription.
“About what happened, I am very remorseful and sorry,” she quoted him as saying.
It had no impact. For several minutes, she repeated the witnesses’ testimony, finding those who spoke on behalf of the government to be credible, while finding the defense expert not.
In calculating Marc’s sentence, Rusakova said the court considered the nature of the crimes, the degree of social danger, as well as the impact of the punishment on the prisoner and his family.
“As circumstances mitigating the punishment of M.H. Fogel, the court considers his attitude to the crime, full admission of guilt, sincere remorse, committing crimes for the first time, positive characteristics. In addition, Fogel M.H. has serious diseases,” the judge read.
But, Rusakova continued, his crimes created a public danger and are considered to be “especially serious crimes related to illicit trafficking in narcotic drugs.”
Based on that, she concluded, Marc was not entitled to a reduced sentence.
Instead, Rusakova continued, the goals of punishment could be achieved only if Marc were sentenced to “real deprivation of liberty.”
Then she issued the penalty: 14 years in prison. Irina, stunned, translated it for Marc.
He didn’t react.
“I was just numb. I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “But I could believe it.”
Marc’s conviction was broadcast all over Russian media that day. By the time he returned to the SIZO, everyone knew.
“They could hardly believe it, like the sentence was so outrageous,” Marc said.
Some people tried to reassure him that he would never be held for 14 years. But it didn’t matter.
“It’s the fact that you live with that and hear that every day,” Marc said, “that 2035 was the day I was supposed to leave.”
About this project
Over eight months, TribLive reporter Paula Reed Ward met with Marc Fogel a dozen times to talk about his experiences being held in the Russian prison system, his dramatic rescue and his ongoing adjustment to freedom.
Ward spent more than 20 hours in conversation with Fogel and interviewed his loved ones, attorneys, government officials and friends. She also reviewed Russian court documents and U.S. State Department filings.
This five-day exclusive series, which includes visuals from TribLive photographer Kristina Serafini, is the culmination of that reporting.
About the author
Paula Reed Ward joined TribLive in August 2020 as a courts reporter following a 17-year career at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where she was part of the team that won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the synagogue shooting in Squirrel Hill.
Raised in Pleasant Hills, Paula attended Indiana University of Pennsylvania and majored in journalism. Her first job was at the Pottsville Republican & Evening Herald. She then spent five years as a police and courts reporter at the Savannah Morning News, in Savannah, Ga. It was there that she also earned a master’s degree in criminal justice.
Paula is an adjunct professor at Duquesne University and is also the author of the book “Death by Cyanide: The Murder of Dr. Autumn Klein.”
You can contact Paula at pward@triblive.com.
The series
Chapter One: From Darkness to Light: Marc Fogel’s journey to freedom
Coming Monday: Chapter Three: Fogel spends days reading, praying and grappling unpredictable conditions
Coming Tuesday: Chapter Four: Unexplained departure, and then a triumphant arrival to the U.S.
Coming Wednesday: Chapter Five: Finding a new normal, and working through guilt; ‘We will be thankful for generations’