Philip Foster
Introduction
Philip Foster, a former television actor best known for playing Christian Wright in the Liverpool soap Brookside, has been jailed for a total of nine years over a £13.6 million modelling fraud that conned thousands of would-be models and their parents. Foster, 51, was sentenced in his absence to eight and a half years at Sheffield Crown Court in February 2025, fled to Spain before his trial, and was given an additional six-month term for absconding after he was finally arrested and extradited.
He was arrested in Alicante in September 2026 and subsequently extradited to the UK. Sentencing him after his return, Judge David Dixon told Foster: “You were a coward, you decided to hide and didn’t come and face the music.”
Background Information
Foster appeared in Brookside, the Merseyside-set soap that ran from 1982 to 2003, playing the character Christian Wright.
For more than eight years he ran what prosecutors described as a network of fake modelling agencies and photographic studios, targeting aspiring models and their parents. A six-year investigation by National Trading Standards found that more than 6,000 victims handed over money after being falsely promised opportunities for paid modelling work.
The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation
Convicted and sentenced. Philip Foster was convicted of fraud and money laundering over a £13.6m fake-modelling-agency scheme, sentenced to eight and a half years in his absence, and given an extra six months for going on the run — a total of nine years.
Rather than appear for his trial, Foster went on the run and hid in Spain. Sheffield Crown Court sentenced him in his absence in February 2025 to eight and a half years’ imprisonment for fraud and money laundering.
He remained at large until Spanish authorities arrested him in Alicante in September 2026, after which he was extradited to the United Kingdom. The court added a further six-month sentence for absconding, bringing his total term to nine years.
At the sentencing hearing, Judge Dixon pointed to the lifestyle Foster had funded from the fraud — designer watches and a Porsche bought for his daughter, and photographs of him on yachts — as evidence that he was “living a lifestyle based on the income from this illegal scheme”. The judge noted that his co-defendants had come to court to be sentenced, unlike Foster.
Public Reaction and Consequences
The court also heard of personal tragedies in Foster’s life. His barrister, Anthony Barraclough, told the court that Foster’s wife had died from cancer and that his son Michael had been murdered around Christmas 2025.
National Trading Standards, whose investigators spent six years building the case, said the fraud had taken money from more than 6,000 people — many of them young hopefuls and their families — who had been promised paid modelling opportunities that never existed.
The image of a former soap actor sentencing victims to years of financial loss, then fleeing abroad rather than facing a jury, drew renewed attention when the BBC reported his extradition and return to custody in October 2026.
Current Status
Foster, 51, is in custody serving a nine-year sentence — the original eight-and-a-half-year term for fraud and money laundering plus six months for absconding. The sentencing that began in his absence in February 2025 is now being served in person.
Impact on Their Career/Life
Foster’s acting career had long since faded, but his name is now permanently attached to one of the UK’s larger modelling-scam prosecutions: a fake-agency network that extracted £13.6 million from over 6,000 victims across eight years. The extra sentence for absconding, and a judge’s public rebuke calling him “a coward”, followed him back from Spain along with the extradition itself.
Sources
- “Brookside actor who went on run jailed for £13m modelling fraud” — BBC News — source