Notorious serial conman Peter Foster’s mother Louise dies

Notorious serial conman Peter Foster says his greatest regret is that his criminal lifestyle robbed him of time with his mother before her death.

Lousie Foster-Poletti, a trailblazing Gold Coast real estate agent, died in the early hours of Wednesday morning aged 88 after a long illness.

Foster, 57, has spent years behind bars on four continents, only getting out of jail in October 2018 after serving just shy of 18 months for fraud.

He had used the fake name ‘Mark Hughes’ to convince a punter to put $1.3 million into a sport betting scam, until a clerical error caught him out.

Notorious serial conman Peter Foster says his greatest regret is that his criminal lifestyle robbed him of time with his mother Lousie Foster-Poletti before her death

Foster, who has been jailed on four continents, hugs his mother after his bail hearing in the Magistrates’ Court in Suva, Fiji, in November 2006

Racked with guilt as his beloved mother’s illness became terminal, Foster spent the last 18 months of her life caring for her, even helping her go to the toilet. 

‘My mum was my life, I’m a mummy’s boy and proud of it. I imagine I will struggle to get over her loss every day for the rest of my life,’ he told Daily Mail Australia. 

‘Caring for her has been the most satisfying the fulfilling thing I’ve done in my life.’

Ms Foster-Poletti was always her son’s biggest backer, no matter what scam he was running, and even convinced Alan Jones to advocate for him.

‘Mum was my best friend, my most loyal ally, she defended me to the hilt. One of my great regrets is the shame I brought to her name,’ he said.

Foster was last spotted driving a $400,000 Bentley through the streets of the Gold Coast in March 

Foster, 57, was only released from jail in October 2018 after serving just shy of 18 months behind bars for fraud (pictured at a 2017 court date)

Foster described how she died in his arms on her bed with candles burning and a puppy he bought for her a few months ago lying beside her.

‘It’s been a very traumatic period, I’ve been up all night with my sister Jill nursing her, and she died in my arms,’ he said.

‘But she didn’t die in a sterile hospital, she died in her bed surrounded by music and flowers and love. I’m grateful for that.’

Music by jazz legend Nat King Cole played in the room, one of her favourite singers and the subject of a family joke. 

‘When mum was young she was in an elevator with Nat King Cole and he turned to his friend and said ‘didn’t I tell you the most beautiful women in the world are in Australia?” Foster explained.

‘I would joke ‘that wasn’t Nat King Cole, that was Ray Charles’.’

Foster said he knew it was coming but Ms Foster-Poletti deteriorated very quickly overnight so he was still in shock.

Ms Foster-Poletti was always her son’s biggest backer, no matter what scam he was running, even standing by his side after he was arrested in Fiji

Foster was jailed all over the world, often for years at a time, but his mother would always find a way to see him even when others told him not to

He thought he felt the loss of his mother more than many people because he never got married or had his own children or grandchildren.

Foster said his mother was a real estate pioneer who broke the glass ceiling and paved the way for many other women in the industry. 

Her career began with a chance meeting in the 1960s and she found it tough to survive the boys’ club.

‘They made it hard for me. At lunchtime I used to go home and pound my fist on the piano. But I decided I wasn’t going to let them beat me,’ she said in a 2003 interview.

Ms Foster-Poletti’s big break came in 1972 when the Golden Gate was built on the Gold Coast and was then the city’s most prestigious apartment building.

She sold 97 of the units single-handedly.

‘She was the first female real estate agent on the Gold Coast at a time when it was dominated by men, and now there are more women than men,’ Foster said. 

However, she decided to retire in her early 50s, a decision she in 2003 admitted she regretted – and hinted at the effect of her son’s notoriety. 

‘I always used to be known as Louise Foster-Poletti. Now I’m known as Peter Foster’s mother,’ she said.

Ms Foster-Poletti, a trailblazing Gold Coast real estate agent, died in the early hours of Wednesday morning aged 88 after a long illness

The damage to her legacy Foster’s misdeeds caused her is not lost on him, and neither is how much of it she was willing to endure for her son.

‘It’s a shame that my reputation may have detracted from her accomplishments in many people’s eyes,’ he said.

‘They see her as the loyal mother of the conman, but she was much more. She had great success before I came along and, in some respects, buggered things up.’

Foster was jailed all over Australia, often for years at a time, but his mother would always find a way to see him even when others told her not to.

‘When I was in prison, girlfriends have come and gone but my dear old mum would struggle up to the jail, wherever I was, every week without fail,’ he said. 

‘I would say to her ‘mum I don’t want you to visit me on Mother’s Day or your birthday’ but she would say ‘it’s my mother’s day and that’s where I want to be’. 

‘She became very popular with prison officers and inmates because she was a mum who, despite my faults, was there at every opportunity.’

Peter Foster’s mother’s day tribute

Peter Foster posted a loving tribute to his mum Louise Foster-Poletti on what would be the last Mother’s Day in 2019 before her death on Wednesday.

‘Despite Winx like odds against her, my mother will be with us this Mother’s Day having left Pindarra Hospital through the front door and not via the basement,’ he wrote.

‘The Foster family circus, as I imagine us to be, has travelled the world as one ever since I first started creating mayhem in the early 80s.

‘We have celebrated Mother’s Day or Mothering Sunday or a similar sentiment worldwide, from the Ritz casino in London, the Waldorf Astoria in New York, Beverly Wiltshire in LA, to the beaches of the Caribbean and our own island paradise in the South Pacific.’

Foster wrote that the best Mother’s Day he had was when he was on the run in 2014 and managed to sneakily spend it with her.

‘The best Mother’s Day wasn’t where you would find the rich and famous, but a little farm house at Ewingsdale, on the outskirts of Byron Bay when I was hiding out having managed to get myself in strife again, this time for contempt of court,’ he wrote.

‘I was supposed to surrender to the court but got sidetracked.’

The damage to her legacy Foster’s misdeeds caused her is not lost on him, and neither is how much of it she was willing to endure for her son

He claimed that he refused to turn himself in because he was caring for his mother after she had a heart attack.

‘That’s how I would be in a farmhouse that Mother’s Day five years ago, just Mum and me. I wasn’t going to jail whilst she was so frail and needed care,’ he wrote.

‘As Mick Gatto advised me when I went on the lam, you have to go behind the door and not come out. I took him literally and never once left the property in over a year.’

On Mother’s Day last year he feared, correctly it turned out, that it may be her last and decided to do something special.

Foster managed to convince a racing manager to enter a horse named Little Bubulu the family had bought for her into the Mother’s Day stakes at Sandown in Melbourne – and it won.

‘It was just the two of us. No fancy restaurant. Flowers hand-picked by me from the garden and not from our overpriced Gold Coast florist’s cool room,’ he wrote.

‘Mum said after the race that this was the best Mother’s Day of her life.’ 

Ms Foster-Poletti campaigned so hard against her son’s extradition to Britain in the late 1990s on fraud charges that she got politicians from all parties on his side.

She even convinced broadcaster Alan Jones to oppose his extradition on air, and write to then-Prime Minister John Howard on his behalf.

‘There’s no doubt I’m a flawed man, but any good you see in me is because of her,’ Foster said.

‘Anything that I’ve done that is honourable is because of her. She was a very good and honest woman.’ 

Foster was last spotted driving a $400,000 Bentley through the streets of the Gold Coast in March.

The career criminal zoomed around a rich neighbourhood in the Bentley Continental with a mystery woman. 

Foster was driving the luxury convertible along the same street where Baz Luhrmann and his wife Catherine and two children were staying.

The Australian director was quarantined in a palatial estate after Tom Hanks, who is the star of his upcoming Elvis biopic, tested positive for coronavirus.

Lurhmann and his family self-isolated for 14 days as a precaution and but did not test positive for coronavirus.

Infamous grifter Foster had expressed his excitement at being Luhrmann’s ‘neighbour’ in a post to his Facebook.

The career criminal, who has been jailed on four continents, zoomed around a rich neighbourhood in the Bentley Continental with a mystery woman on Saturday

 Foster calls himself an ‘International Man of Mischief’ on his Facebook page

Foster, who calls himself an ‘International Man of Mischief’, claimed to Daily Mail Australia that the Bentley was just a rental.

Much mischief was made over three decades of fraudulent activity that saw him locked up numerous times and fined even more often.

The first time was aged 20 when he was docked £75,000 in 1983 for a fake £40,000 insurance claim over a cancelled boxing match.

A year later he tried to put on a Muhammad Ali fight and was declared bankrupt after he failed to pay for the advertising.

Through the boxing legend he discovered Bai Lin tea which he tried to market as an ‘ancient Chinese diet secret’ for weight loss.

His company went under in 1988 while being investigated by the ACCC and he promptly left the country and tried the same ruse in Britain.

There the tea was marketed by model Samantha Fox whom he also wooed to be his girlfriend by ignoring her at a party.

‘I’m old enough now to know that I’d never be taken in again by the likes of Peter Foster. But then, I was 22 and impressionable,’ Fox later told The Mirror.

‘My parents had split and here was a man who was clever, manipulative and domineering. I came close to marrying him because I was so vulnerable.’

Foster was driving the luxury convertible along the same street where Baz Luhrmann and his wife Catherine and two children are staying in a palatial estate (pictured) 

Luhrmann was quarantined after Tom Hanks (pictured together), who is the star of his upcoming Elvis biopic, tested positive for coronavirus

However, the tea was tested and exposed as common Chinese black tea, so his company was fined £5,000.

That’s Life presenter Esther Rantzen described Foster as ‘the most ruthless conman I’ve ever met’ after her program exposed his fraud.

Foster in his autobiography was unapologetic about his 1980s antics: ‘I excelled … [in] giving exhibitions in extravagance. Every day crackled with excitement as I made millions, models, and mayhem.

‘Being a conman is one of the most prestigious and respectable professions you can pursue.’

He fled to the U.S. after the Bai Lin ruse was blown, where he tried the same con again – naming the tea Chow Low and claiming it lowered cholesterol.

But making false claims about cholesterol is a crime in California and he was jailed for four months for conspiracy to commit grand theft.

Foster (pictured in 2004) has more than three decades of fraudulent activity that saw him locked up numerous times and fined even more often

Foster outside a Gold Coast court in 2012. He was arrested for the first time was aged 20 when he was docked £75,000 in 1983 for a fake £40,000 insurance claim over a cancelled boxing match

When he returned to Britain in 1994, having not paid his fine, he was slapped with a £21,000 fine plus £8,000 in costs.

Soon after he convinced 19-year-old model Michelle Deakin to help him market  stomach-filling granules as having helped her lose 70kg.

Foster was jailed for two years in Liverpool in 1996 but escaped back to Australia on a false passport while on day release and went into hiding.

Australian police eventually caught him and he spent 18 months behind bars in Brisbane fighting extradition.

While in Australia he was fined him $15,000 for promoting a ‘thigh contour treatment’ called Biometrics, and he was jailed for five months for withholding information from the ACCC.

After he was sent back to the UK, he was jailed for another 33 months for using false documents to get credit for a company marketing a thigh-reduction cream.

He took advantage of the 2000 Fijian coup aftermath to set himself up as the campaign manager for the New Labour party, but lost the 2001 election.

Back in Britain he romanced Carole Caplin who was good friends with Cherie Blair, wife of then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

He romanced Carole Caplin who was good friends with Cherie Blair, wife of then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair

Through his relationship with Ms Caplin (left) to Foster got Ms Blair (right) involved in ‘Cheriegate’, one of the most embarrassing episodes in recent British politics, when he arranged for her to buy two flats in Bristol at a discount

The families were so close the Blairs agreed to be godparents to Foster and Caplin’s child, but the pregnancy ended in a miscarriage.

Foster got Ms Blair involved in ‘Cheriegate’, one of the most embarrassing episodes in recent British politics, when he arranged for her to buy two flats in Bristol at a discount.

When the deal was exposed by the British press, Ms Blair claimed she wasn’t personally involved in the deal and barely knew Foster.

By 2003 he was again marketing questionable weight loss pills, which raked in $1 million from 70 people who paid up to $42,000 each to distribute them.

He was fined again and banned from being involved in the health, weight loss, or cosmetic industry.

Foster then meddled in Fijian politics again, this time ingratiating himself to the ruling SDP party, until local police discovered he entered the country using false documents.

He stripped down to his underpants and waded into a river to escape arrest, but was hit in the head by a boat propeller.

Claiming police had actually hit him in the head with an oar, he went on a hunger strike in prison and fled to Vanuatu when he was granted bail.

Charged with entering the country illegally, he was fined, jailed for six weeks, and then deported to Australia despite being wanted on charges in Fiji.

Foster went on the run over contempt of court charges and was dramatically arrested in Byron Bay with footage of his arrest aired on A Current Affair

He was dragged to a police car after a struggle with officers that got him an assaulting police charge

Back in Australia he was jailed for four years on fraud and money laundering charges for using false documents to get a $300,000 loan from the Bank of Micronesia.

Foster had used the cash to pay rent on his girlfriend’s Gold Coast home, pay off some credit card debts, and funnel money to family businesses.

He walked free after just 18 months but was soon in hot water again over diet spray SensaSlim that conned 90 investors out of $6 million.

Foster created fictitious Swiss research institute Institut de Recherche Intercontinental that claimed to have conducted a successful trial of the product.

The ACCC charged him with contempt of court for breaching his ban on working in the industry and he was jailed for three years. 

However, Foster went on the run before he went to prison – but still filed an appeal against his sentence while in hiding.

He was dramatically arrested in Byron Bay in October 2014, with footage of his arrest aired on A Current Affair.

Sporting wild white hair and a long beard, he was dragged to a police car after a struggle with officers that got him an assaulting police charge.

Foster in 2007 was charged with entering Vanuatu illegally while fleeing police in Fiji, and was fined and jailed for six weeks (pictured in a Vanuatu courtroom)

Foster was running Sports Trading Club as Mark Hughes so punters and investors wouldn’t simply Google his name and run for the hills. For this he was arrested in 2017 (pictured)

The arrest also revealed he was operating sport betting company Sports Trading Club while in hiding, under the Mark Hughes alias.

Queensland Fair Trading had received almost 400 complains about the company. 

Finally, he was arrested in February 2017 over his most recent conviction for making a false statement with intent to obtain financial advantage.

Foster was running Sports Trading Club as Mark Hughes so punters and investors wouldn’t simply Google his name and run for the hills.

Police facts in the case stated that an employee overheard him calling himself Hughes on the phone and when asked why he replied: ‘Well I can’t use Foster, can I?’ 

He was only caught out when a partner at the company accidentally used Foster’s real name instead of Hughes in a text message to the punter. 

Foster was denied bail and spent almost 18 months in jail before he was allowed to walk free in October 2018 after being sentenced to less prison time than that. 

Read more at DailyMail.co.uk