December 23 2002.

Luigina Pelotti sucked on her umpteenth fag at her luxury marina apartment in Dublin and, in her nasal Gold Coast drawl, put the spin on her son's latest activities.

The 71-year-old mother of con man Peter Foster had been dragged into the imbroglio with Cherie Blair, wife of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, after a British newspaper printed transcripts of telephone conversations between Ma Foster and her son.

But, last week, Pelotti, a bankrupt known to police and tax authorities as Louise Foster, Louise Pelotti and Lavina Loyola Poletto, was saying the tapes of their talks had been spliced.

Under siege by the Irish media, the chain smoker, who has spent time in Holloway women's prison in London over an unpaid fine, questioned the articles that paint her in a poor light.

In one exchange, she reportedly says "f*** that" in response to suggestions that a $300,000 newspaper fee for her son's revelations about the Blair’s be paid to charity, because Foster is a criminal.

"I know what I said and what I didn't say," she said at her flat in Malahide Village, an exclusive North Dublin suburb on the edge of the Irish Sea.

Pelotti also made the astonishing claim that Britain's Associated Newspapers, owners of the Daily Mail, which first published revelations of the scandal, were using her son to remove Mr Blair from power.

If Associated Newspapers wasn't "out to get" Mr Blair, Pelotti said, "there would be no fuss about Peter meeting or knowing Cherie Blair".

Pelotti has been living in Dublin since March, when Foster set up his last diet hoax in Ireland, promising investors more than $2 million a year if they first invested their money in his Trimit diet pill company.

Foster, convicted of fraud in Britain and Australia and banned from holding British company directorships, set himself up in a Malahide mansion, rented the apartment for his mother and, with inquiries pouring in, skipped back to London.

Through his girlfriend Carole Caplin, Mrs Blair's fashion and lifestyle adviser, Foster tried to gain respectable links to support the as-yet unproven Trimit.

Transcripts of his phone calls to Ireland reveal Pelotti was very well aware of her son's attempts at further financial shenanigans.

At her Dublin home last week, she said: "I am not my son's keeper. I am not responsible for anything he does. I just want to be left alone to get on with my life."

History tells a different story.

Pelotti has been with her son almost every step of his chequered career. She has stood bail for him, been charged alongside him, wept at the appropriate times in court when he faced jail and gone together with him into bankruptcy.

From an early boxing promotion scam while he was a teenager living with her on the Gold Coast, he has had her at his side.

Foster may have dated topless model Samantha Fox, Gold Coast stripper Tina Martin, Perfect Match hostess Tiffany Lamb, AFL star Dermott Brereton's former girlfriend Donna Rudrum, and former model and nude dancer Caplin, but, as he has said more than once, "I'm a mummy's boy."

 http://abcnews.go.com/sections/2020/2020/2020_abagnale021122.html

'If two wrongs don't make a right, try three.'

By Frank Thorn. December 22 2002. The Sun-Herald

Before he fled Australia with a price on his head from gangland figures he had robbed, Peter Foster was writing a book on how to fleece the public.

Page 13 of the Con Man's Bible contains some telling phrases.

Describing selling as an art form in which he is an actor, Foster writes: "Acting is all about conning people, making them believe what you want them to believe. Being a con man is one of the most prestigious professions you can pursue."

And in a swipe at professional people like Cherie Blair, he writes: "A barrister is a prime example of a con man. He or she will defend the indefensible, trying to con the jury."

Foster ends the chapter with some advice which Cherie Blair should have heeded: "But don't lie. A good conman doesn't lie."

Foster penned this manuscript behind bars in maximum security at the Arthur Gorrie Correctional Centre, a prison outside Brisbane.

On misleading would-be investors and justifying cosmetic accounting, he writes: "If two wrongs don't make a right, try three! You do not have to tell lies with your financial statements. State the facts, present the figures and let other people's imagination do the rest."

Foster left his unfinished manuscript behind in the hands of a disgruntled gangland business associate because he left Australia in a hurry when he felt his life was in danger.

He had ripped off local crime figures on the Gold Coast by getting them to invest in his latest Trimit slimming scam.

The gangland identities had invested about $170,000, the proceeds of heroin dealing and organised crime, with Foster.