Peter Foster

On 20 August 2020, Foster was arrested in Port Douglas on alleged links to an international sports trading scam.

In January 2018 Foster was declared bankrupt after failing to pay the ACCC $53,714 in costs.

On 10 February 2017 Foster was arrested on the Gold Coast for "fraud related issues". He was then extradited to New South Wales over his alleged involvement in a 2013 sports betting scam. On 14 February the matter was mentioned, then adjourned, at Waverley Local Court. The charges are connected to his 2014 'Sports Trading Club' arrest. In March he was refused bail on the grounds that he posed an unacceptable flight risk; this was confirmed by the Supreme Court on 27 July 2017.

In May 2016 Foster was fined AU$660,000 and permanently banned from being a company director or having any business in the diet or health industry as a result of his involvement in SensaSlim. SensaSlim was fined a total of AU$3.55m. Fosters' involvement was carefully concealed from investors. He was behind the invention of a non-existent Swiss research institute, Institut de Recherche Intercontinental, which it was falsely claimed was conducting a large worldwide trial into the efficacy of SensaSlim. The court found that SensaSlim directors had concealed Fosters' involvement in the scheme, knowing that his reputation as a conman would put people off SensaSlim. Federal Court Justice David Yates described Foster as "beyond redemption". Justice Yates also said "He preys on the right-mindedness of others to cheat and deceive. In the present case, he lurked behind SensaSlim precisely for that purpose".

Foster was granted conditional early release six months before the end of his sentence in October 2015. The reasons for the release were redacted from the ruling due to a claim that publication would place Foster at an unspecified risk.

On 14 February 2014, an Interpol Alert was issued for Foster for extradition to Australia to face contempt of court charges. Later it was found Foster had falsely purported to have been in Fiji from the time he absconded until his arrest in October 2014.

In 2013 the Federal court of Australia found Foster in contempt of court for his involvement with SensaSlim while still under the court ordered ban obtained against him in 2005. He was sentenced to three years imprisonment but failed to appear and was sentenced in absentia.

In September 2012 he claimed in court that his only involvement with Sensaslim was to allow a promotional video to be filmed in his house, but denied being involved with production of the DVD. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission claimed that Foster assumed false identities while operating the scam, using the moniker IMOM, or "International Man of Mischief", in a table charting the development of the business and also to denote his own number in his mobile phone. Foster denied creating the table and claimed that the nickname referred to a former business partner. He was charged with contempt of court for breaching the 2005 Federal Court order banning him from taking part in the weight-loss industry.

On 18 November 2011, Foster was arrested by Australian Federal Police officers and Australian Competition and Consumer Commission officials in relation to diet spray company SensaSlim Australia for misleading and deceptive conduct in breach of the Trade Practices Act. The Therapeutic Goods Administration banned the sale of SensaSlim with effect from 1 December 2011 for advertising breaches. He was released on A$125,000 bail in December 2011. The judge noted that Foster had complied with bail conditions since being released in 2009, was close to his sick mother and that she would benefit from him looking after her.

Foster told the media Cherie and Tony Blair at one time agreed to be godparents to the yet-to-be born child of Foster and his partner Carole Caplin, who later miscarried. He also said he celebrated Christmas with the Blair family and was a guest at 10 Downing Street on the night of his 40th birthday, however, Blair declared in her apology she'd only met him once, for less than five minutes. Foster later acknowledged that apart from one brief meeting, he'd only spoken with her by phone three times and corresponded with her by email. He acknowledged Blair had not attempted to influence his deportation order from the UK. He was also covertly recorded by The Sun newspaper coaching his mother to speak to the media about a visit to 10 Downing Street on his birthday that never took place.

Deported from Vanuatu, Foster was charged on arrival in Australia and pleaded guilty to fraud and money laundering charges over the forgery of documents to fraudulently gain a $US300,000 loan from the Bank of the Federated States of Micronesia. He'd transferred some of the funds illegally into Australian bank accounts. Foster claimed he'd taken out the loan to develop a tourist resort on Yasawa Island, but the court found he'd transferred funds from the loan account to pay his girlfriend's rent on her Gold Coast home, repay credit card debts and channel funds into family related businesses. He was released on parole at the start of May 2009 after serving eighteen months of a four-and-a-half-year sentence.

Foster had again involved himself in local politics, offering financial support to the ruling SDL party for the successful 2006 re-election. However, he switched his support when the Qarase government was usurped in the Bainimarama military coup. Foster approached the military and offered to covertly obtain evidence that the Qarase regime had been corrupt. On 2 January 2007, the military released what it said was a secretly obtained video of a restaurant conversation between Foster and Navitalai Naisoro, the electoral strategist of the SDL party. Naisoro told Foster that the 2006 elections were rigged, with cooperation from certain elements of the police. Several Cabinet Ministers were implicated, but ousted Prime Minister Qarase angrily denied the claims. He suggested that the conversation recorded on video could have been staged, and another official suggested the recording had been "spliced".

In October 2006, Fijian police rejected Foster's offer to leave the country if they dropped immigration violation charges over the use of forged documents. After evading arrest for three weeks, Foster stripped to his underpants and jumped into a river to escape police and sustained a head injury from hitting his head on the propeller of a boat. Foster, however, claimed police had assaulted him and went on a hunger strike in hospital demanding the police investigate the brutality of his arrest. His doctor remarked that the injuries were consistent with having hit his head on the boat, in accord with the police account.

In September 2005, Foster and Chaste Corporation were fined by the Federal Court for price fixing as well as misleading and deceptive conduct. Foster was also banned for five years from being involved directly or indirectly in any cosmetic, health industry-related or weight-loss business. In 2006, the Federal Court dismissed Foster's appeal against the five-year ban and ordered him to pay the ACCC's court costs. In 2009, Cousins was struck off as a legal practitioner over his role in the scam.

Foster later claimed, on his 2004 ABC TV Enough Rope appearance, that he believed his partner was pregnant with Tony Blair's child, the product of a long-standing extramarital affair. However, The Times investigated the claims and found them "a catalogue of errors and inconsistencies" and an "elaborate hoax". Carole Caplin said about Foster's claims: "This is just a new way for Peter to get attention. He is just a fantasist and these absurd stories shouldn't be given any credibility."

On Foster's return from Ireland in 2003, the ACCC moved to freeze his assets and seize his passport over an investigation into the Chaste Corporation and its sale of bogus TRIMit weight loss pills. The company hid Foster's involvement, and its advertising claimed the pills were 700% more effective than their rivals. Foster's business partner, Barrister, Sean Cousins, promoted the pills, kept silent on Foster's involvement in the business and the fact he knew the pills didn't work. The scam netted at least $1 million from 70 people who paid up to $42,000 each for the rights to distribute the pills.

Foster was investigated by the UK Department of Trade and Industry in 2002 for effectively acting as the managing director of slimming pill business, Renuelle, despite being barred for five years in 2000 from holding company directorships. Former business partners, including ex professional footballer, Paul Walsh, accused Foster of conning them into investing £150,000 in Renuelle. At the time he was fighting deportation to Australia to face fraud charges for a separate weight loss scam.

In 2001, in the wake of the 2000 Fijian coup d'état, Foster invested over F$1 million in the New Labour Unity Party, a breakaway group from the Fiji Labour Party (FLP). He became 2001 Fijian general election campaign director for Tupeni Baba, the former deputy prime minister, whom Foster described as the "Nelson Mandela of the South Pacific." Describing himself as a "freedom fighter for Fiji", Foster expressed concern there could be another coup if the FLP leader and former prime minister, Mahendra Chaudhry, who had been deposed in the 2000 coup, returned to office. Laisenia Qarase and his SDL party won government.

In a press statement during the scandal, Foster also claimed "no one has ever lost money through my enterprises," and asked, "could it be I had to be discredited by the establishment?" Journalist, Malcolm Brown disputed this, writing that thousands had lost money. Three years before, in 1999, former Consumer Affairs Commissioner, Jan Taylor, and Foster's former sales manager, James Small, described how many of Foster's victims were middle income earners who were left financially devastated by his scams.

Foster was arrested in Australia on a British extradition warrant, but absconded on bail to be rearrested in February 1998. He spent over 18 months in prison in Brisbane fighting extradition, claiming his life would be at risk if he returned because he was an informant against corrupt prison officers. He was returned to Britain and imprisoned in 2000 for a further 33 months at St Albans Crown Court for using fraudulent documents to obtain credit for a company, Foremost Body Corporation, that sold thigh-reduction cream. Having served time on remand, Foster was released, but banned for five years from holding company directorships in the UK. Told by the judge, "the sooner you go from the country the better," Foster returned to Australia, but moved to Fiji where he became involved in politics in 2001, before resurfacing in Britain and Ireland in 2002.

In 1994, Foster returned to England and was fined £21,000, with £8,000 costs, in relation to the outstanding Bai Lin Tea fine. In 1996 he was imprisoned over his sales of slimming granules for conspiring to provide a product with a false description. Nine months later he absconded while on day release from open prison and returned to Australia on a false passport. The ACCC charged him with fraudulently marketing Biometrics, a "thigh contour treatment". He was fined $15,000 and compelled to sign an undertaking to desist from making statements about the therapeutic effects of the product. He was then jailed for five months on charges relating to withholding information from the Australian Securities & Investments Commission.

Foster undertook undercover work for the Australian Federal Police in 1993 and 1997, wearing listening devices in meetings with known criminals as part of investigations into the trafficking of illicit drugs. Foster said in an interview that he was influenced to take part by the effect his sister's longstanding drug addiction had on his family, and that he'd always been against drugs. In a comment on Foster, criminologist Rick Sarre said that confidence tricksters will often assist police so they can use it as a bargaining chip if they are caught for an offence.

In December, Foster made a bid to have his bail conditions changed so he could move from house arrest at a Suva hotel to his home on Denarau Island, but Fiji's Department of Public Prosecutions applied for him to be remanded in custody. Foster tendered an affidavit by former Australian Federal Police (AFP) officer, Ian Eriksson, that he'd worked as an informant for the AFP during the 1990s. Two other affidavits were submitted from former solicitors to convince the court that Foster would not be a flight risk if he were allowed to move to house arrest in his home. A local singer provided a $5000 surety. However, he had checked out of the hotel where he had been ordered to stay as per his bail conditions and failed to appear in court twice. In mobile phone communications with the media, he insisted he was not on the run and was under the protection of Fiji's military Government since he had taped members of the ousted government admitting the last election had been rigged. However, AFP investigations showed that Foster was actually on his way to Vanuatu, deceiving police and the media by using a satellite phone.

Muhammad Ali's third wife, model Veronica Ali, introduced him to Bai Lin tea, which Foster went on to market in Australia as an "ancient Chinese diet secret" for weight loss. The company went bankrupt while under investigation by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), whereupon he took the tea to the United Kingdom, hiring Samantha Fox to promote it. Under testing, the tea was proven to be ordinary black China tea and Mr Foster's company was fined £5,000 in 1988 for breaching the UK Trade Descriptions Act. However, Foster fled Britain to the United States where he remarketed it as Chow Low Tea. Advertisements in The New York Times and The Washington Post claimed the tea lowered the cholesterol levels of its consumers no matter what they ate. The fraudulent claims saw him convicted for conspiracy to commit grand theft and he served four months in a Los Angeles prison. Fraudulently stating that a food product could lower cholesterol was an offence under California law (Sherman Food and Drug Act).

Peter Clarence Foster (born 1962) is an Australian career criminal who has been imprisoned in Australia, Britain, the United States, and Vanuatu for a variety of offences related to weight loss and other scams as well as absconding from justice. His convictions range from fraud and money laundering to contempt of court and resisting arrest.