Inside former Brookside actor's £13.6m criminal empire that funded luxury lifestyle

Ex-Brookside star Phillip Foster turned to a life of crime after featuring in the beloved 90s soap.

But his criminal empire came crashing down despite years of dodging police while living it up in Spain. The former actor, who went by Philip Dowd during his time as Christian Wright on the show, evaded action over a multi-million pound empire built on fraud for eight years.

Despite being convicted of conspiracy to defraud and sentenced to eight-and-a-half years in jail back in February 2025, he still managed to avoid a cell. Foster, 49, currently lives in Spain.

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Foster’s criminal enterprise ran up a £13.6 million fortune, and those working under Foster were also sentenced in his absence. Seven associates were all convicted in relation to his crimes.

Foster’s operation centred around tricking young victims into believing they would earn an income as professional models. They and their families would part with huge sums of money in the hopes that it would come to fruition.

The premise was that Foster’s employees would set up a photography studio before using social media to contact potential ‘clients’. They would give anyone who responded to messages the impression that the modelling agency was interested in them.

Then, unaware victims would be invited to a ‘free’ test photoshoot. They would head to the studio, experience the shoot and be told how successful others had been in the past, handed brochures and told they had passed the test.

A wide web of fraudulent studios across the country

is criminal network took root in Manchester, Liverpool, London, Bristol, Leeds, Coventry and Nottingham. Each city had several studios, despite the best efforts of National Trading Standards to limit Foster’s influence in each location.

Staff told victims that agencies were interested but then informed them they needed to buy the photographs to become a professional model. Some saw through it but many were tricked and handed over their hard-earned money. When the scam agencies were investigated, it was discovered they would only trade for a short period of time and then quickly dissolved having paid no tax, filed no returns and been the subject of several complaints.

The criminal network’s second layer involved another company that would tell the victim how staff had heard of their potential to model and would make them pay an annual fee that they were told would ensure work in the future. But of course, this never happened and investigators ended up identifying 59 modelling agencies and 23 companies involved with a complex web of financial transactions.

Foster employed a number of people to run the day-to-day operations while he remained in Marbella, Spain.

In London victims were asked to pay up to £1,350 for a digital portfolio - although prices depending on what the seller thought they could convince the victim to shell out. One, a mother of two, paid £700 for pictures of her two daughters before parting with a further £650 for an online profile and a list of agencies - half of which didn’t exist.

Foster's victims

One of Foster’s victims, Merseyside-based radio DJ Pete Price, labelled Foster as “brazen” having lost out on hundreds after being scammed for an appearance at a show in Liverpool. Pete eventually took Foster to court and won, as a county court judgement was made against the criminal obliging him to pay £402.50 including court costs.

But Pete never got his money back as bailiffs failed to apprehend Foster. Pete later bumped into Foster at a function, where he claims Foster took a wad of notes out of his pocket, fanned them in front of Pete and then sent him a glass of champagne with compliments.

Pete told the Liverpool Echo after his sentencing: “I had forgotten all about it but seeing it brought back all the memories. It wasn't even the money that annoyed me, it was 'how dare he rip me off?'

"I remember at the time I spoke about it on my radio show and I was inundated with calls. God knows how much money he has made and spent over all those years. What made me really angry was that he would always wave money in my face. It's brazen."

The end of a criminal empire

Philip Foster, of Edificio Marina Mariola, Marbella, was sentenced to eight-and-a-half years in his absence, for conspiracy to defraud.

His son, Michael Foster, 27, of Snowdon Lane, Liverpool, was sentenced to three-and-a-half years for conspiracy to defraud.