Living the high life, conman Peter Foster up to his old tricks

Peter Foster’s silver tongue has made him countless millions of dollars in decades of global scams and swindles. It may also now bring him down.

Peter Foster, who a NSW Supreme Court judge described as a ‘notorious confidence trickster’, takes his convertible Bentley for a spin on the Gold Coast.

Peter Foster’s silver tongue has made him countless millions of dollars in decades of global scams and swindles. It may also now bring him down.

Foster, fresh out of prison for using a fake name in a massive betting scam, has in recent months again been flush with cash, living in a $2000-a-week ­riverfront mansion at Ashmore on the Gold Coast and driving a $250,000 Bentley convertible. Sources say there’s also a recent­ly purchased Rolls-Royce in his garage.

Now it can be revealed the lavish lifestyle coincides with the 57-year-old allegedly secretly using yet another alias, posing as Bill Dawson, head of an online “sports trading” scheme.

The scheme, Sport Predict­ions, asks investors to provide a minimum $US50,000 ($73,000) loan to be wagered on soccer, golf, ­tennis, the NBL, NFA and other sporting events by expert “traders”.

Foster, an undischarged bankrupt, is understood to have drawn in at least $2m by targeting overseas investors, but the total figure is suspected to be far higher, sources say. A recording of Foster allegedly using the Bill Dawson alias while wooing investors is to be aired in an Audible Originals podcast, The King of Sting, on the life and crimes of the notorious Queensland conman.

“We’ve got a mathematician in Melbourne,” Foster, allegedly pos­ing as Mr Dawson, says in the ­recording.

“I always say he wouldn’t know the difference ­between a cricket ball and a soccer ball if it hit him on the head. But he’s a numbers man and he’s a statistics man and he’s basically very good at crunching the numbers.”

A magazine profile on Foster last year noted his friendship with a horse trainer called Bill Dawson, after Foster arrived at the interview with Mr Dawson by his side.

Forensic linguist Kate Storey-Whyte confirms on the podcast, by investigative journalist Justin Armsden, that it is Foster in the ­recording. Ms Storey-Whyte previously identified Foster’s voice in a separate recording to the satisfaction of a Federal Court judge, during proceedings over his ­involvement in a bogus weight-loss nasal spray.

In the new recording, Foster discusses making payments in Bitcoin. “When we started this business we were like a drop in a bucket,” he says. “And then five years ago we were a drop in the swimming pool. And now we’re a drop in the ocean.

“The growth in gambling is unlike anything else in the world. I’ve never seen anything like it. So the amount of money you can get placed is phenomenal.”

Over the past 40 years, Foster has never been far from trouble, infamously using British pin-up Samantha Fox, his then girlfriend, to spruik scam slimming product Bai Lin tea in the 1980s.

In 2002 he sparked a full-blown British political crisis when it was revealed he helped Cherie Blair, wife of then prime minister Tony Blair, buy two Bristol flats at a discount.

In 2018 he was convicted and jailed in NSW for almost 18 months — time already served on remand — for using the pseudonym Mark Hughes in the fraudulent Sports Trading Club scheme. STC duped hundreds of Aust­ralian and international investors out of $29.6m. In a creative flourish, it claimed to use savants to predict sporting winners.

Despite the huge sums involved, authorities failed to pursue more serious fraud offences against Foster that could have seen him hit with a heavy sentence.

In a subsequent civil judgment last year, NSW Supreme Court judge James Stevenson found STC was a “fraudulent scheme devised­, masterminded and controlled by Mr Foster”.

The judge said Foster was a “notorious confidence trickster” and investors’ money “was mis­appropriated at Mr Foster’s ­instigation and direction”.

IFW Global chairman Ken Gamble, a private investigator hired by STC investors to pursue Foster, said on Friday it was a “travesty of justice” that the conman was not still in jail for the scheme.

Queensland police have previously investigated Foster over allegations he tried to hire a hit man to kill Mr Gamble, who had frozen about $10m linked to the STC scam, after recordings emerged of sinister phone calls to a friend in The Philippines.

In the calls, Foster complained that Mr Gamble was “trying to screw us for millions”.

“It’s 100 per cent serious. I just need someone to be able to put it together and make it happen,” Foster said.

The friend claimed to be in contact with another man who wanted to know a “ballpark figure … Two scenarios. One public and one disappear­, forever, not a trace”. Foster denied trying to hire a hit man and the police investigation went ­nowhere.

Australian Financial Security Authority bankruptcy records list Foster as using many other aliases, including: David Hortz, Graham­ Baker, Mike Parker, Thomas Mitchell, Peter Hall, Peter Strong, Peter Walker, Peter Poletti and Peter Cooper. Now he’s alleged to have added one more: Bill ­Dawson.

Journalist Armsden told The Weekend Australian that police, courts and corporate watchdogs had “all ­failed” to stop Foster.

“The result is it’s left him out on the street to do more damage,” he said. “Unless he’s locked up, or to the day he dies, he’s never going to reform, he’ll just keep scamming­. He’s relentless.”