[15] At 20, Foster was fined by an Australian court for attempting to make a fraudulent insurance claim when a boxing match he was promoting fell through.
[5][10][16] The following year, Foster became a television producer and filmed a documentary with Muhammad Ali while living several weeks with him in his home in Los Angeles.
[5] The company went bankrupt while under investigation by the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC), whereupon he took the tea to the United Kingdom,[4] hiring Samantha Fox to promote it.
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.
[4][10][15] 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.
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.
[4][10] 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.
[22] 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.
[4] 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".
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.
[32] 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.
[25] 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.
[36] 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.
[48] The Press Council noted that Foster had himself offered evidence of convictions dating back to 1982, resulting in a substantial fine and four separate periods of imprisonment.
Interviewer Andrew Denton, however, cited convictions after that date, including for travelling on a false passport, resisting arrest and assaulting police officers.
[22] Late 2005, Foster returned to Fiji, gaining entry to the country and obtaining a work permit using a forged police clearance certificate to conceal his criminal record.
[50] He reportedly gained a lease on waterfront property at Champagne Beach, in the Yasawa Islands, and sought investors to develop a resort.
[4] 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.
[54][58] 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.
[4][50] 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.
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.
Foster reached a deal with the Vanuatu government and was deported to Australia, in spite of being wanted for separate fraud charges in Fiji and Micronesia.
[8][77] The Australian Competition & 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.
[8] In January 2012, Foster took out a restraining order against a Gold Coast sports betting scheme proprietor, Philip Cropper, under the Peace and Good Behaviour Act.
[91] He pleaded guilty to assaulting police and resisting arrest during the raid and was extradited to Queensland to serve a minimum of 18 months for the contempt of court conviction.
[101] 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.
[104] On 31 August 2014, she completed a declaration that Arabella Racing Pty Ltd owned the horse, though there were suspicions that she was providing a front for her uncle.
[104] He did not declare that he was formerly known as Matthew Thomas Reed and has been sentenced to 12 years imprisonment in 2007 for smuggling cocaine and ecstasy tablets worth A$211 million into Queensland from British Columbia.
[104] Private investigator Ken Gamble described the sale as a "deliberate and covert attempt to deceive Racing Victoria and to conceal Foster's beneficial interest in the racehorse".
[111] In May 2018 Foster claimed that John Chardon had confessed to shooting his wife and weighing down her body to dispose of it by allowing the outgoing tide to pull it out into Southport Seaway.