The liar who his way into
SLIPPERY AUSSIE’S DIET PILL SCAM
THIS trickster’s influence in 10 Downing Street makes him a top candidate for the title World’s Craftiest Living Conman.
The slippery Aussie wanted Tony Blair’s support for a “healthy diet” plan for schoolchildren – supported by doctors and sports stars – on the back of which he planned to peddle diet pills.
Foster first gained the confidence of the former Labour premier’s wife Cherie by bedding her “lifestyle guru” Carole Caplin.
Foster had known of Caplin’s connection to the Blairs before even meeting her.
She was a regular visitor to Downing Street and had even holidayed abroad with them. Within three days of engineering an introduction to her at a Chelsea coffee bar in 2002, the 39-year-old conman and the 42-yearold ex-model were lovers. “She’s quite a babe,” Foster told to a pal, “but more importantly, she knows the Blairs.” But the 2002 enterprise unravelled when the Press got wind of it.
Blair and his barrister wife were engulfed in allegations of political sleaze when newspapers revealed the conman – who had been convicted in three countries – was on phone-chatting terms with the residents of No10. The newspapers also showed he had acted as Cherie’s financial adviser to haggle down the price of two apartments that the Blair family wanted to buy.
In cosy emails, he told Cherie: “We weren’t looking to buy the property but steal it. Your pleasure is my purpose – Peter.”
She described him as her “star” and assured him: “We are on the same wavelength, Peter.”
How the Blairs were taken in by this chancer is something of a mystery.
But the fact Foster was able to talk his way into the nation’s corridors of power shows his remarkable talent for persuading even the most sceptical and cynical individuals to part with their natural caution — and ultimately their money.
Peter Foster is described as “a likeable bastard” by his old cronies back home on Australia’s Gold Coast, the Queensland holiday haunt of bikiniclad beauties and bleach-haired surfers.
As a schoolboy there he graduated from selling fake watches to betting scams and insurance fraud before arriving in Britain in 1986 to launch the “miracle” slimming aid Bai Lin Tea.
He was introduced to the product by Muhammad Ali’s third wife Veronica while making a documentary about the boxing legend.
It made millions, aided by the publicity surrounding his celebrity girlfriend, Page 3 model Sam Fox. He also got champion jockey Lester Piggott and Sarah, Duchess of York to endorse it.
He will do anything to advance himself and will sacrifice anyone else
Yacht
Further dodgy diet products were launched here, in the US and in Australia, with Foster usually going on the run just ahead of his creditors and the law.
A spell in an English jail failed to curb his career, and when he fled while on day release in 1996 he left fellow convicts and even warders conned out of cash.
After cosying up to the Blairs, Foster had a brief spell in Ireland, where he was also selling slimming pills.
He was then deported to Australia and surfaced again in Fiji in 2006.
Here he persuaded one of the Pacific nation’s political parties to hire him as a “property consultant” in the creation of a new tourist resort. He repaid their trust by pocketing a government bank loan.
On the run to evade fraud charges, Foster was caught wading ashore from a yacht on the neighbouring island nation of Vanatu.
He was stripped to the waist and carrying only a pair of sandals and a plastic bag with his possessions.
Deported back to Queensland, he was jailed first for moneylaundering and then for forging bank documents.
Foster was freed