A former TV soap actor, Philip Foster, has been arrested in Spain after he skipped bail before his trial for a £13.6 million fraud. Mr Foster, 51, who played Christian Wright in the Liverpool soap Brookside, was arrested by officers in Alicante on Thursday.
The National Crime Agency (NCA) stated that Mr Foster was convicted and sentenced in his absence at Sheffield Crown Court in February 2025. He is wanted to serve an eight-and-a-half year jail sentence after being found guilty of fraud and money laundering last year.
Extradition proceedings are now under way to return him to the UK, according to the NCA. Mr Foster ran an operation involving sham modelling agencies that exploited aspiring young models and their parents for over eight years.
A National Trading Standards (NTS) investigation found that more than 6,000 victims paid large sums of money based on false promises of securing paid modelling work. The fraud was run by Mr Foster from his base in Marbella, using a network of associates in England to operate sham agencies and photography studios in cities including London, Manchester, Leeds, Bristol, Coventry, and Nottingham.