The notorious conman Peter Foster has been arrested in far north Queensland over an alleged sports betting scam.

The 57-year-old was arrested while walking along a Port Douglas beach about 8am on Thursday.

He faces being extradited again to New South Wales and is expected to be charged with fraud-related offences.

He is currently being held at a Port Douglas police station until Sydney detectives arrive to escort him across the border.

Foster has previously been jailed for fraud offences including a multimillion-dollar weight-loss scam.

He sparked turmoil for the former British prime minister Tony Blair in 2002 when – acting as a financial advisor – he helped Blair’s wife, Cherie, buy two discounted apartments.

Blair denied that Foster was her financial adviser or that she attempted to help him beat deportation proceedings.

The latest twist in Foster’s tale comes after the private investigator Ken Gamble claimed he was alerted to fresh accusations of a betting scam by a “businessman in Asia”.

“The businessman felt he’d been the victim of an elaborate scam and asked me to investigate in an effort to recover his investment,” Gamble claimed in a statement on Thursday.

Gamble is the head of IFW Global, a company that targets fraud and cybercrime. He alleged Foster was acting under a false name as the operator of a sports trading company.

After several weeks of investigation, Gamble said he tracked Foster to Port Douglas. He referred the complaint to NSW police, who conducted their own inquiries before issuing a warrant to Queensland police for Foster’s arrest.

It is not the first time IFW has been involved in capturing the conman. In 2014, the firm was hired by a media organisation to locate Foster in northern NSW.