This was published 1 year ago
This fugitive con artist fooled health departments across Australia. Until the day her phone rang
By Gary Adshead
She was such a convincing con artist that she was made chief operating officer of the largest hospital south of Perth. Credit: Marija Ercegovac
Ashton Foley was a $200,000-a-year chief operating officer at a major West Australian hospital, then chief executive of a rural Victorian hospital.
Michelle Gonzalez was a two-bit fugitive fraudster wanted in the United States.
A decade has passed since I met both women and it remains difficult to comprehend how they turned out to be one and the same.
To fully appreciate the con-artistry of Foley aka Gonzalez, and how she managed to dupe company executives, politicians, journalists, lawyers and the entire Parliament of Western Australia, a good starting point is a business called Axiom Strategic Consulting – which has never had anything to do with the con artist, but whose name was dragged into the con without its knowledge.
“Ashton joined the firm earlier this year, bringing with her nearly two decades of senior management experience,” read the “meet the team” blurb on what had appeared to be Axiom’s website in 2012.
“She has worked in an array of highly competitive industries in Australia and overseas, including higher education, pharmaceuticals and banking.”
Had anyone bothered to check those credentials, or pushed for more detail about Foley’s background, she would never have been employed to run the operations of Mandurah’s Peel Health Campus, 72 kilometres south of Perth.
Foley’s life story was bogus and the Axiom webpage, which described her as the company’s managing director, was a complete fabrication.
Foley did not graduate “with distinction” from New York University’s Stern School of Business and she was never made a Fellow of the Financial Institute of Australasia.
Axiom, which is a legitimate business based in Florida, had never employed Foley.
In early 2013, when her identity was beginning to come under scrutiny, I used a search engine to run a check on who was behind the Axiom web address spruiking Foley’s apparent career highlights.
I discovered the final lie which ensured her downfall.
Foley had registered a fake internet address purporting to belong to Axiom, but in the process she used Michelle as her first name and not Ashton.
This was significant – because of two phone conversations I’d had with her one week earlier.
Before me making those calls and investigating the website, Foley had been getting away with her audacious deception for almost a year.
In March 2012, Foley had doctored up a resume from scratch, applied for a lucrative executive position in health administration and a month later, was put in charge of the private-public Peel Health Campus – even as she was wanted in the US state of Georgia on fraud charges.
Ashton Foley fabricated both identity and qualifications to become chief operating officer of Peel Health Campus (top) then chief executive of the Orbost Regional Health Service in rural Victoria. Credit: WA Health / Supplied
To use a vernacular, Foley had become the fox guarding the henhouse and within months she was causing mayhem, establishing herself as a whistleblower against the hospital when facing pressure about her own management abilities.
So convincing was the American-born shyster that a committee of parliament was formed in October 2012, to hear claims the Department of Health had overpaid Health Solutions – then-parent company of Peel Health Campus – as much as $1.8 million.
Some of the allegations stacked up, but none were raised out of genuine concerns about an abuse of the public purse.
Foley had created a smokescreen to take the focus off her own deceit.
When Foley, who was born in 1972 according to a US passport, was called to the parliamentary inquiry, no one knew the star witness was a pathological liar.
She spent three hours giving evidence under oath while occupying the moral high ground.
“There is a lack of transparency from a financial perspective at Peel Health Campus,” she told the committee of Greens, Labor, National and Liberal politicians.
“To see some of the things that were going on there was disgraceful.”
Despite private concerns about Foley’s bona fides from management at the hospital, including high-profile health leader Dr Neale Fong, the members of parliament took pity on her and asked if she had decided to resign from the hospital because of bullying.
“There have been threatening phone calls,” she replied. “There have been times when I have been followed. There have been sticky notes that say ‘burn, burn, burn’ put on my door.”
As Foley was wrapping up her appearance before the committee, it appeared one MP had grown suspicious.
“Just run through – what are your qualifications?” asked Liberal Liz Behjat.
Foley couldn’t help herself.
“My previous role was director of strategy at Open Universities,” she began. “As part of that, I was senior business and strategic analyst at Phosphagenics Limited, which is a biotechnology company in Melbourne.
“In the United States, I was a research analyst and deal coordinator with Merrill Lynch. I also was a licensing and development analyst at Pfizer.”
It was all nonsense, but when the committee handed down its final report into the Peel Health Campus issues in November 2012, Foley was lauded as a hero.
“The committee wishes to place on record its appreciation to Mrs Ashton Foley, who put the interests of the people of Western Australia above those of her own,” a statement read.
“It is not easy for anyone to be the whistleblower and Mrs Foley is to be commended for her courage in this regard. The committee wishes her well in future endeavours.”
Foley, no doubt chortling to herself over that glowing character reference, left Perth soon after appearing at the inquiry and began a new job as chief executive of the Orbost Regional Health Service in rural Victoria at the end of 2012.
Ashton Foley with a copy of the report she prompted into Peel Health Campus.Credit: Mandurah Mail
This time, the serial imposter had convinced her new employer that she was Dr Ashton Foley, having added a doctorate in public policy to her qualifications.
But the walls were finally about to close in on the charlatan.
By the end of January 2013, colleague Colleen Egan and I had enough conflicting information about Foley’s true identity, including a police mugshot from US authorities, to blow the whistle on the whistleblower.
On Thursday morning, January 31, I telephoned her twice to ask her if she was in fact a person called Michelle Marie Foley, who also used the aliases Gonzalez and Ritter.
Seemingly unfazed by my questions, Foley suggested she send copies of her twins’ birth certificates to prove she was in Australia in 2008.
Her proof never arrived, but mine was mounting.
I had Michelle Marie Gonzalez’ US charges and Foley’s passport photocopies both showing the same date of birth.
The Axiom website registration under the name “Michelle” was the icing on the cake.
When I called her back she became increasingly defensive and abusive.
“Report what you want,” she said. “Everything I said at that parliamentary committee was 100 per cent accurate. Ruin things for me. It doesn’t make any difference at this point. This is so unfair.”
A day later, Egan and I went with a front-page story questioning Foley’s authenticity.
It was then Foley crumbled and confessed.
Clockwise from top left: mugshots of Michelle Gonzalez, Michelle Marie Foley, Michelle Marie Gonzalez, Michelle Marie Gonzalez. Credit: mugshots.com
She told me over the phone she was born Michelle Marie Gonzalez, which was a name on not one but two mugshots of women with criminal records in America.
Foley had been banking on us being uncertain about who was who.
“I didn’t think you had the right one, to be honest,” she said. “Obviously, at some point I realised that you did.”
Minutes later, the conversation ended abruptly.
“I don’t care what you believe,” she said. “It’s a courtesy that I’m even speaking to you.”
That was the last time I spoke to Foley, but it was far from the end of the story.
On February 4, she was forced to resign as the health service chief executive in Orbost as the board of directors called for an inquiry into the recruitment process that led Foley to their door.
I headed to Victoria in the hope of tracking her down and came close by finding her partner at that time, a bloke called Wayne.
He claimed Foley had left him and flown back to the US, which turned out to be another lie on top of all the others.
A week later, while trying to stay ahead of authorities in Victoria, Foley was arrested in relation to an offence she had committed in Melbourne before she had moved to WA to become a Peel Health Campus executive.
The twists and turns kept coming when police described Foley as a “40-year-old Hawthorn woman” with seven children.
WA police soon succeeded in having Foley extradited from Victoria and when she appeared in the Perth Magistrates Court on March 1, the charge she was facing gave the already extraordinary story a new dimension.
She was accused of attemptig to extort $43,000 from her former employer, Health Solutions, by threatening to release confidential documents.
The magistrate also read out five aliases Foley had been using.
By October 2013, a decision had been made by state prosecutors not to pursue the case against Foley, telling the court it was no longer in the public interest.
Where she is and what she’s doing all these years later is anyone’s guess, but inside the tattered manila folder I kept on the Peel Health Campus story is a reminder of how bizarre the saga became.
“Your poor excuse for a journalist, Adshead, was so desperate he had to invent a sensational (but mostly inaccurate) story,” reads an email from a person purporting to be a friend and supporter of Foley.
When I read the level of detail in the two-page email, I couldn’t help but wonder if Foley had written it herself – using yet another alias, of course.
Next week on The Reporter: Tow trucks and death threats: The Perth industry that spun out of control
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