Subway franchisees trusted one buying group to get them fair prices on supplies.
For twenty five years that group was run by Janet Risi Field.
Federal prosecutors say she turned that trust into a sixty million dollar personal slush fund.
How One Office Controlled Every Bite of Subway's Supply Chain
The Independent Purchasing Cooperative does not make sandwiches and nobody outside the restaurant industry has ever heard of it, but it decides what every one of Subway's more than 20,000 franchisees pays for bread, meat, cheese, napkins, and everything else that shows up on a sandwich.
Janet Risi Field built that cooperative from scratch starting in 1996 and ran it for twenty five years, which meant she sat at the table every time a vendor wanted a Subway contract and negotiated the price every franchise owner in the country would pay.
According to a federal indictment unsealed September 21, 2026, in the Southern District of Florida, Field quietly steered contracts to vendors whose brokers agreed to kick a cut back to her.
Prosecutors say those kickbacks moved through shell companies designed to keep Field's name off the paperwork, funneling more than sixty million dollars to her and family members over the life of the scheme.
Her brother, Steven Louis Risi, 70, of Coral Gables, is charged alongside her as a co-conspirator in the money laundering counts.
The Jewelry the Slush Fund and the Six Million Dollar Goodbye
Prosecutors allege the money built a life that had nothing to do with sandwiches: more than $400,000 in jewelry, renovations on homes in Florida and North Carolina, $420,000 paid out to a family personal assistant, and more than $150,000 to a housekeeper and handyman.
Investigators say Field also ran a multimillion-dollar slush fund dating back to the early 2000s and used $3.4 million in personal credit card spending tied to the scheme.
A 2011 lawsuit accusing a contractor of an inappropriate vendor relationship with Field quietly settled for $8 million, according to the indictment, years before any of this became public.
When IPC finally cut ties with Field in 2021, the cooperative paid her more than $6 million in severance on the way out the door.
She is now charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, honest services wire fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering, charges that carry up to twenty years apiece.
The FBI's Miami field office and the FDIC's inspector general built the case, and Assistant U.S. Attorneys Eli Rubin and Roger Cruz are prosecuting it in federal court under case number 26-cr-20405.
What Every Five Dollar Footlong Was Actually Paying For
Every franchise owner who ever complained that Subway's ingredient costs felt too high for a sandwich chain built on cheap volume now has a federal indictment telling them exactly where some of that money might have gone.
A purchasing cooperative exists for one reason: to use the size of 20,000 stores to beat down prices for the small business owners actually running them, not to hand the person negotiating those prices a direct cut of the deal.
These are not faceless corporate shareholders absorbing a loss, they are the husbands and wives, the first-generation immigrants, and the retirees who sank their savings into a Subway franchise because they were promised the cooperative had their back on costs.
Franchise owners do not set the price of their turkey and cheese, and the person who did was allegedly also deciding how much of that price ended up in her pocket instead of staying out of theirs.
A $6 million severance check in 2021 was the industry's reward for a departure that prosecutors now say should have come with handcuffs instead of a goodbye bonus.
Small business owners who trusted a system built to protect them got a two-decade lesson in what happens when nobody is watching the person doing the watching, and nobody running a Subway franchise got a vote on any of it.
Sources:
- U.S. Attorney's Office, Southern District of Florida, "Former Restaurant Chain Cooperative's CEO and Brother Charged in $80 Million Bribery and Money Laundering Scheme," Department of Justice, September 21, 2026.
- Nation's Restaurant News Staff, "Ex-CEO of Subway's purchasing co-op indicted in $80M bribery scheme," Nation's Restaurant News, October 2, 2026.
- Franchise Times Staff, "Siblings Charged With Stealing $80M From Subway Franchisees in Money Laundering, Bribery Scheme," Franchise Times, October 2, 2026.
- Local 10 News Staff, "South Florida siblings' Subway bribery scheme cost franchisees $80 million, feds say," Local 10 News, October 1, 2026.