Serialously with Annie Elise - 247: Exposing The Truth About Belle Gibson & Netflix’s ‘Apple Cider Vinegar’

Episode Date: March 3, 2025

Belle Gibson wasn’t just another influencer - she was the face of the early Instagram wellness movement, the poster child for clean eating, alternative healing, & most shockingly, the idea that nutrition alone had cured her terminal cancer. But behind the scenes Belle was hiding some sinister secrets… Join our True Crime Club for access to BTS, Bonus Content, Our Private Group Chat, Giveaways and More! Shop Our True Crime Merch Follow the podcast on: IG, Facebook and TikTok For Business Inquiries: [e-mail] About Annie Today’s Sponsors: Ollie - Head to https://ollie.com/ae and use code AE to get 60% off your first box of meals when you subscribe today! SonoBello: Schedule your free consultation now at https://sonobello.com/ae   Better Help: Visit https://betterhelp.com/ae today to get 10% off your first month Hiya: Get 50% off when you go to https://hiyahealth.com/ae   Episode Sources: BBC Daily Mail The Times News 9 The Guardian Elle.com People.com Business Insider Cosmopolitan

Hey, true crime besties. Welcome back to an all new episode of Serialistly with me, Annie Elise. I hope you guys are having a good start to your day because we have got a lot to talk about today. I have been like reeling wanting to talk about this case with you guys. I've been researching ad nauseam, so many, and there's so much to talk about. Before we get into that, if you are a brand new listener and you have never checked out this podcast, and this is your first time listening, let me give you a little breakdown of what it is we do here.

My name is Annie. I like to consider myself like a true crime bestie of yours trying to break down these cases with you as though I'm talking with my best friend or my sister over a cocktail or coffee and just talk through these things together. Do deep dives, talk about the rabbit holes, talk about what's on social media, theories, all of those different things, and just break it down in less of a clinical way than other podcasts do or other documentaries do or shows to where it really feels digestible and like you're talking with a friend. So if this is your first time listening to an episode and you enjoy it by the end of this, please follow the podcast so that you don't miss future episodes and thank you for

joining in any event and listening to today's episode. Now, as I said, ever since I watched this show on Netflix, I have been wanting to do the deep dive. I've talked about it a little bit, so you might know where I'm going with it, but it's apple cider vinegar and all things Belle Gibson. Belle, Belle, Belle, please. I mean, I know that you're interested in getting to the bottom of this and presenting the facts as they are. The facts or you're not. Yes, Belle was very convincing in her conviction

of being sick and having an illness. Stay strong in your identity and your safu. Look to your community and make decisions like that which Gada have taught us. Look to the Jhasa to lead us forward. Just every answer she was giving me was just confirming my gut instinct that she was lying. Now if you've been on Netflix lately, you might have seen Apple Cider Vinegar already, which is the show about Belle, and it's this woman who really built her empire entirely on health, wellness, and this massive, massive lie.

Now, there is some truth to the show, but it's also a dramatization. So, as we always talk about, there's a lot more to the story. And I don't know, for whatever reason it is, documentaries sometimes, whether it's for legal reasons or because they have to fit a lot in in a short amount of time They don't go into all of the details and if you're anything like me anytime. I'm watching a dateline a documentary a series I'm on my phone. I'm googling it. I'm looking on reddit I'm looking at their social medias because I want to know everything everything below the line and

I swear after all this research I feel like I know Belle Gibson better than she probably knows herself, okay? I feel like I just am in her head and I don't know. It's not probably not healthy. I'm probably not well, but I just like to know every single detail. So as I said, some of it was covered in apple cider vinegar. There also has been a new documentary that came out that was called The Search for Instagram's Worst Con Artist. That touched on it a little bit, but it mostly included the infamous 60 Minutes interview with her and kind of regurgitated certain certain details. It really didn't do a deep dive. So I'm

here to do the deep dive. I'm here to go over all of it. Also to go through what's fact, what's fiction, what got left out, and the biggest question, who the hell is the real Belle Gibson? Will the real Belle Gibson please stand up? Belle wasn't just another influencer. She was the face of the early Instagram wellness movement. She was the poster child for clean eating, for alternative healing, and most shockingly, the idea that nutrition alone had cured her terminal cancer. So at the height of her fame, Belle Gibson was like everywhere. She was praised as this wellness guru, this best-selling author.

She was a living testament to the power of clean eating. But then, as it so often does, it all came crashing down. This woman who claimed to have healed herself through diet and lifestyle had in fact fabricated everything. The whole thing was a lie. There was no cancer. There was no miraculous recovery. It was just a huge web of lies and lies that were inspired by the truth but somebody else's truth. So before Belle became the face of the wellness movement, before the cookbook deals, before the social media fame, she was just Annabelle Natalie Gibson. She was born on October 8, 1991 in Lausatown, Tasmania, Australia. Now Belle's childhood, I gotta be honest, it's somewhat of a

mystery, and a lot of details do still remain unknown. And her early years largely are undocumented as well. What we do know comes mostly from her own words, but what we know about that and from her own words, it paints kind of this picture of just instability and constant chaos. Belle grew up in Brisbane, Australia, and she claimed that her father was absent for most of her life, leaving her mother, Natalie, to really shoulder the weight of their family's challenges, which there were a lot of them. And Belle has described a childhood where she herself really acted as a caretaker from a remarkably young age, starting at just five years old.

In Belle's version of events, she was the one who was holding everything together, the glue of the family, helping care for her mother, who suffered from MS. She cared for her younger brother who was autistic. She was the matriarch of the family. They also didn't have a lot of money, and her mom was also always apparently dating questionable people. So because of that, Belle said, you know, I really had to step into this role.

I had to take care of my mother, my, you know, unwell brother. I had to do everything. We didn't have a lot of money. I had to figure things out at just such a young age. Like, I'm the one who carried that weight on my shoulders. And by the time Belle reached elementary school, she pretty much claimed that she was essentially a mini adult. That she was navigating life with responsibilities that would be overwhelming to actual grownups, to real adults. She was in charge of everything from helping her mother move around, to managing her brother's behaviors, helping him with school, getting dinner on the table, you name it. On top of that, she was also making her own lunches. She was cleaning the house, doing the grocery shopping.

She was arranging medical appointments for both her mom and her brother. She even claimed that she was a huge advocate for her brother, asking doctors to focus on his diet and to focus on holistic methods of healing, all to help his autism. Now I don't know how she did this at just 5 years old, long before her peers even learned how to ride a bike without training wheels or even tie their shoes, but she claimed that she did it. And she says that because of it, she was overwhelmed. So Belle left her family home at the age of 12 years old.

She moved around a lot, crashing on friends' couches, staying with neighbors, never truly having a stable place to call home. Now after a brief stint in a local high school, she ended up dropping out at around the 9th grade. She later claimed that she didn't drop out of school, though, that she just started to homeschool herself, but there was really not a whole lot of evidence to back that up. Then in late 2008, when she was 17 years old, she decided to make a pretty bold move. She packed her bags, and she headed to the complete opposite side of Australia, 45 hours away from the place that she grew up,

now in the city of Perth. There she was all alone. She didn't have any family. She didn't have any friends. She didn't have a solid plan for how she was going to get by, but she made it happen. And Belle had, I will say, this naturally charming personality. She was friendly, she had a way of just making people feel seen and feel validated. She used that charisma too, to her advantage. She even landed a job at a call center for a private insurance company when she was young and trying to like make her way now in Perth. And she did well for herself. She succeeded in her position and she started befriending all of her coworkers, really using that charm, that wit, almost that sob story too of her childhood to lure people in.

And in her free time, Belle became heavily involved in the local skateboarding community. It isn't clear whether this was something that she was always interested in, if that was something she liked to do and, you know, skate or whether she ever actually even skated herself or just hung out with people who did it. But the people involved in that community became her main core group of friends. And as for Belle, her interest in skateboarding followed her into her online world, her new orbit, her online persona. She even became an active member of the website

skateboard.com where she carefully just curated and crafted this whole new rebellious identity. Up until then, Belle was your typical normal looking teenager. She had light eyes, blonde hair, but then she decided she needed to make a change. She dyed her hair black, she got piercings, she also got multiple tattoos, and it was almost like she wanted to become this whole new person and leave her previous life just completely behind her. Now on this skateboarding form,

Belle found a space where she felt like she could finally be whoever she wanted to be. She filled her posts with profanity, with crude humor, and would have these very candid discussions about partying and dating, just fully immersing herself in this online community. But between jokes, she would also start sharing a little bit more about her vulnerability, about personal things regarding herself.

Things like how she dreamed about going to school one day to study marketing and business. Or how she was drawn to the idea of building something for herself, crafting a brand, and really making an impact. And it was almost like that forum message board situation was like her first testing ground. A place where she could experiment with different personas, gauge reactions, and learn how to shape a story that people would really want to follow. She basically learned how to capture the attention and make people care about her. So this forum was almost like an early version of social media for her.

And as she spent more time on the site, her posts grew increasingly personal. She started sharing more details about her life, and she just had this level of openness that made this form feel less like an online message board and more like a personal blog. Then, by May 2009, her posts took a pretty drastic turn. Pretty dramatic turn, I should say. Because what started as just casual discussions about skateboarding, nightlife, partying, things like that, they all shifted to something much more serious. Because Belle started posting about some pretty alarming health issues, claiming she had suffered a stroke, she was now dealing with severe heart problems and problems that required her to have multiple

surgeries. And Bell's posts did not go unnoticed. I mean, the more that she shared about her health struggles, the more people on this forum started paying attention to her. Many of them had formed genuine bonds with her too, and they truly cared about what she was going through. Then, on May 5th, her posts took a particularly alarming turn. She claimed that she had to be rushed into emergency surgery. Her post was brief, but it was pretty dramatic, and this caused a flood of responses from all these worried members and friends of hers. The post read, I have fluid around my heart that needed to be drained, or else my heart would have stopped pumping blood and I would have died.

I need to get a valve replaced, but I can't afford it yet. So everybody was panicked, everybody was worried. But then just two weeks later, Belle escalated her story. She now told people on this form that she was heading back to the hospital, this time for her third heart surgery. Now this announcement started to raise some eyebrows because didn't she just say that she couldn't afford surgery 15 days ago, but yet now she's going into her third surgery?

How is this tracking? How was she affording multiple surgeries in such a short time? But many people didn't really question it. They kind of set their doubts aside, they responded with words of encouragement, with words of encouragement, with words of concern, support, and they wanted to be there for Belle. A day later, on May 21st, Belle returned to the forum with an update. According to her, the surgery had not gone as expected. She claimed that she temporarily died on the operating table all before doctors miraculously revived her. Her posts read,

The doctor comes in and tells me that the draining failed, and I went into cardiac arrest and I died for just under three minutes. I have the most intense bruising from the paddles when they electrocuted me back to consciousness. I went straight into a coma situation for six hours and I just woke up crying for my iPhone. They're amazing. I'm sitting up already and I am a miracle." And Belle's health claims did not slow down there. They only intensified. Eventually, she told this form, her new online group of peers and friends, she told them her condition was worsening. Now, she was saying that she had a tumor on her heart and it was time to prepare for the inevitable. She was saying that she had a tumor on her heart and it was time to prepare for the inevitable.

She was terminal. Alright, if you guys know my dog Freckles, you know that he is the pickiest eater ever. I swear. Finding a food that he actually likes has honestly been harder than feeding my two toddlers. But once we tried Ollie, it totally was like Freckles' favorite thing in the world. He devoured it. Tail wagging, bull licking, I mean asking me where's the rest with his little face. He was like a whole new level of obsessed. Now Ollie is fresh, clean nutrition that is made just for your pup. It also has five protein first recipes that they absolutely will flip over. It's like recipes like fresh beef with sweet potatoes or fresh turkey with blueberries.

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That's ollie.com slash ae and enter code AE to get 60% get your money back. That's O-L-L-I-E dot com slash A-E and enter code A-E to get 60% off your first box. Start your dog's new year off right with Ollie. Now based on the news that Belle had a tumor on her heart, Belle claimed that chemotherapy was inevitable. She was going to have to have it no matter what. It was the only option she really had at that point. So to prepare for it, she started cutting her hair. She was bracing herself for the day that it was all going to fall out

and she was going to have to shave her head. And her posts became more frequent and more dramatic, just detailing every single setback and this new diagnosis. Yet, despite this supposed rapid decline, Belle made another life change in July of 2009. Once again, she packed up and she relocated, this time to Melbourne, a city that is known for its very vibrant art scene, its very diverse culture, and just a complete new place for her. It was another fresh start for Belle and another

chance to, quite honestly, reinvent herself. So this tough, outspoken skater girl that was dark hair, tattoos, piercings, that girl just sort of started to fade away, now making room for a different version of herself. Instead of the girl who just announced that she was shaving her head for chemotherapy, she arrived now in Melbourne with this long blonde hair, fully intact. She kind of went into this more preppy, very polished, even boho-esque kind of image. Just a complete stark difference from who she was before and who she portrayed herself to be. And there, Belle also settled into a new life. She socialized, she built new relationships, and she embraced this next chapter of her life.

And it was during this period that she also entered a new relationship with a young guy named Nate Corbett, who also soon became the father of her child, because yes, despite all the dire health struggles, everything that Belle talked about online, she experienced a very smooth and complication-free pregnancy. And in 2010, she gave birth to her son, Oliver.

And while stepping into motherhood was, yes, a significant shift in her life, her relationship with Nate was very short-lived. The two of them were always arguing back and forth. Nate wasn't really ready to take on the responsibility of fatherhood or have a child, so they ended up parting ways soon after Oliver was born, and they chose just to co-parent together instead. Now by then, Belle's health took another dramatic turn. Despite the fact that she was seemingly okay and healthy and well during her pregnancy, Belle's condition started deteriorating rapidly. By this point, she had transitioned from posting on that skateboarding form to now posting on Facebook and giving all of her

updates there. She also claimed that she had been diagnosed with a stage 2 malignant brain tumor. She also told her followers that she met with a cancer specialist who told her that she only had four months to live. That was it. So now she was preparing for the end. But Belle was not going to give up, and she really presented herself as a fighter, determined to defy the odds. At first, she said that she was following conventional medical advice, undergoing chemotherapy all in an effort to prolong her life. However, after just two months, she claimed that she was getting frustrated with the lack

of progress. She wasn't seeing the results that she wanted to see. So she told this very moving story that she had passed out in front of the Melbourne hospital after receiving treatment. And when she woke up, she had an epiphany. She only had a few weeks left to live. She wasn't gonna live them like this.

So against her doctor's recommendations, she decided to reject modern medicine. She declared she didn't even trust modern medicine anymore. She didn't trust the conventional ways and she wanted to heal herself through alternative therapies. So she committed to a whole food, mostly plant-based, diet and she fully embraced the Gerson therapy, which is a very controversial regimen that claimed to detoxify the body and restore health through very strict diet changes, such as juicing, nutritional supplements, even frequent coffee enemas, which you heard that right.

Shoving coffee up your butt and giving yourself an enema. Now, Gerson therapy was developed in the 1920s by a German physician named Max Gerson. It promoted the idea that chronic illnesses and chronic diseases, including cancer, could all be reversed by flooding the body with nutrients. Nutrients that come from organic fruits, from vegetables, while you're also simultaneously eliminating toxins through relentless detoxification methods, one of the most infamous being those coffee enemas. And again, those are just as it sounds, so look it up at your own risk.

But anyway, advocates of this approach believe that cancer is a symptom of a quote, disease of the whole body, and that detoxifying through diet really can reverse the illness. So Belle said online that this alternative regimen was working wonders, that her cancer was rapidly disappearing. And her story really became this testament

to the power of natural healing, just drawing in all of these different supporters who saw her as living proof that it had doing an alternative path to recovery. It was not only possible, but it also worked. But there was something strange about how Belle handled her illness. While she poured her heart out online, detailing every supposed struggle, she rarely, if ever, spoke about it with her close friends and family. In her personal life, cancer was not a frequent topic of conversation.

She wasn't seeking support from those around her, nor did she even appear physically ill. Yet on the internet, it was a completely different story. And Belle didn't just talk about her health online, she built an entire online identity around it. She even launched a blog and a public Facebook page sharing every intimate and painful detail of her battle with cancer. She chronicled the ups, the downs, the struggles of single motherhood,

her commitment to holistic healing. And I gotta say, it was a very compelling narrative. It truly was. Here was this young, beautiful single mother fighting back against terminal brain cancer with nothing but just her sheer will and willpower beautiful single mother fighting back against terminal brain cancer with nothing but just her sheer will and willpower and natural remedies, juicing, eating healthy. It was unbelievable. She wasn't just surviving either. She was

thriving in all of this. I mean, it's no wonder that her story resonated so deeply with her audience, which at this point was just snowballing and growing. I mean, the amount of followers that she was getting from sharing her story, it was massive. Now, amidst all of this, Belle also attempted to launch an organic baby clothing line. However, the venture did not take off for whatever reason, but the failure definitely did not slow her down. So instead, she decided, you know what, I'm not going to try launching this product. Instead, I'm going to work what's already working, and I'm going to pivot everything and focus solely Instead, I'm gonna work what's already working, and I'm gonna pivot everything and focus solely on social media.

By 2012, she created an Instagram account under the handle HealingBelle. And on this Instagram account, she curated this space to really document every step about her health journey. She would post pictures of her passion for holistic health, pictures of recipes, of food that she was consuming, everything that she claimed was attributed to her miraculous and amazing recovery.

And in her first post, she wrote, I have been healing a severe and malignant tumor cancer for the past few years, with natural medicine, Gerson therapy, and foods. It's working for me, and I am grateful to be here sharing this journey. Her message was simple, yet it was also extremely powerful. It was, change your life one meal at a time. That became her personal mantra, and also a slogan that just fit perfectly into like the booming wellness industry. Her audience exploded when this happened. She was no longer just this voice in the online health space.

She was now quickly becoming one of the most influential figures in Australia's wellness community. During this time, Belle also entered into a relationship with Clive Rothwell. He is an older man and also an IT professional. And while the details about their relationship are a little fuzzy, a little unclear, Clive played a significant role in her life. Not only did he help care for her son Oliver, but some believe that he also might have assisted in building her online presence. I mean, Belle had no known expertise in web development or social media strategy, yet her brand was growing at this like extremely rapid pace.

So it seemed like she had to be getting help from somewhere, and this older IT professional man, I mean, the math maths, right? It feels like it fits. So as her platform expanded, so did the extreme nature of her claims. It was almost like she had to like one-up the ante every time, or one-up the ante, up the ante every time, to where it was like not that she was plateauing, but she wanted to keep the growth happening. So she didn't just talk about her diet anymore. She also started weaving in a very complex narrative about her health. She claimed it to have seizures, brain swelling, difficulty walking, that she suffered from vision and memory problems, and at one point she even claimed that she had ringworm, but that she decided to drink apple cider vinegar to help cure it. And almost immediately she said this remedy, it was like she unlocked some piece of genius

within her because when she drank the apple cider vinegar, this worm crawled out of her stomach into her mouth and she pulled it out. That's not how it works. That's not how it works. And I know that's totally disgusting, but like I said, it's also super misguided because ringworm isn't actually caused by a physical worm, it's a fungus. But still, she went on. She also claimed to have suffered a stroke, and she attributed that to getting the cervical cancer vaccine. And this just drew in more and more people, people who truly distrusted mainstream medicine. They were looking for people who felt the same and a place to validate their skepticism and also validate that there is a natural way of healing. So

Bell had positioned herself as this polarizing yet very compelling figure. She wasn't just some influencer peddling wellness tips. She was somebody who lived through it, healed herself after being told she only had four months to live. Now she had the answers that the doctors didn't. So as her online presence exploded, Belle realized she now had the opportunity to do more than just blog about her experiences. She wanted to turn her platform into something tangible, something that would truly solidify her influence in the health and wellness space. So by 2013, she came up with the idea for The Whole Pantry.

The Whole Pantry is a mobile app, and it would serve as her hub for her entire health philosophy, the recipes, the documenting, helping others, you name it. It wasn't just about documenting her journey anymore. It was about sharing the tools that had supposedly really saved her life. Bill Gibson is part of a new breed of entrepreneur. She is an ecopreneur. Mmm, it tastes like mango. Bill launched the Whole Pantry app last year.

It's essentially a recipe collection full of whole foods and vegetarian recipes, which is the way that we encourage people to get back to the fundamentals of eating more fruits and vegetables. The Whole Pantry was born through Bill's own battle with brain cancer. She was diagnosed with terminal cancer a few years ago. After trying the traditional treatment methods, she turned to Whole Foods to heal herself instead, and she soon began to develop an app. The Whole Pantry was designed as a sleek, minimalist app that offered plant-based recipes.

It also offered lifestyle tips, motivational content that centered around healing through food. And Belle marketed it as a holistic wellness guide, a resource for those looking to reclaim their health naturally. The same meals that she credited with curing her cancer were now accessible to her followers, to anybody who wanted it, reinforcing the idea that they too could heal themselves. If only they followed her lead. So in August 2013, Belle launched the Whole Pantry app. And it was successful almost immediately. I mean, within the first month, the app was downloaded around 200,000 times. By the end of the year,

the app had earned the title of Apple's best food and drink app of 2013, and this is what she wanted. This is really what solidified her place in the booming health and wellness industry. Her followers were already devoted, but now they were treating her word like gospel. But the contrast between Belle and the content that she posted was also striking to certain people. Because here was this young, healthy-looking woman sharing photos of smoothie bowls, raw vegan meals, you know, all these healthy organic fruits, all while claiming to be in the battle of her life with cancer. But still, people flocked to her social media pages and to the app.

They left her heartfelt comments about how they were dealing with their own struggles. They were also cancer survivors and they were battling it. And Belle fully embraced this role as, I don't even know how you would describe it, almost like a public healer. She didn't just offer support, she also was giving direct health advice. She would respond with recommendations

that ranged from daily coffee enemas, shots of apple cider vinegar, warm water with lemon, and then even these all-day long repeated juice cleanses. She tried to make it seem simple. Detox the body, nourish yourself with whole foods, and if you do that, you can overcome anything. The success of the whole pantry was nothing short of amazing either. Overnight, Belle's life was completely transformed.

She was generating hundreds of thousands of dollars from her app and from her social media platforms, making so much money, had such a heavy influence. But this financial success of it all, it wasn't her only goal. She was determined to help others. So with all of this money, the way she wanted to help others was by making a commitment to donate most of her profits to charity, all with the intention of using her platform to help those in need. And she supported a lot of causes, things that dealt with empowering young women who were experiencing poverty, all the way to nonprofits for asylum seekers, I mean, you name it, there were a lot of different causes. But one story stuck a particularly personal chord.

Shortly after launching her app, Belle met a couple whose young son, just seven years old, Joshua Schwartz, had been diagnosed with a rare untreatable brain cancer at the age of five years old. So Belle felt an immediate connection to Joshua's struggle. She believed that his battle, it really mirrored her own. And she empathized deeply with his family's pain. She wanted to be a support system for them. She wanted to help Joshua. So being motivated by this connection, Belle then went to Instagram and she announced that she was going to donate 100% of the week's profits from the whole pantry, all to help the Schwartz family, help them in their efforts to get

medicine to help Joshua. And in a heartfelt caption she wrote, Josh has a similar malignant inoperable brain tumor to the one that I have. From the greatest ache and pains in my heart, I feel this little boy's journey and story. I want to help them find a medicine or a holistic happy miracle. So this combination of entrepreneurial success and passionate philanthropy not only solidified Bell's status in the wellness community, but it also painted a picture of a woman who was determined to overcome personal adversity while also extending just whatever lifeline she could to others who were in need. She claimed to have given over $300,000 to charity, and her narrative

inspired so many supporters to help as well. And in the wake of all of this success, her rising fame opened up a new opportunity. Because in 2014, she signed a book deal with Penguin, and by November of that year, she launched a cookbook bearing the same name as her app, The Whole Pantry. Now this wasn't just a collection of recipes, it was actually meant to be a full roadmap for natural healing, and also serve as a memoir of her personal transformation. The cookbook promised readers an inside look at the plant-based meals that she credited with turning her life around, and it also gave them a guide to embracing a holistic lifestyle. And the preface of Belle's

book was all about her upbringing. She recalled how she had a difficult childhood that was marked by early responsibility being thrown into adulthood early on, this tale of survival. And she wrote, Because Mom was so ill, she needed a lot of help. I remember being six years old and cooking dinner for the first time, standing on a chair to reach the stove. I didn't understand the ritual of food. Cooking was just a survival tool to me, a job, a way out of doing the dishes. Nutrition was drinking

fruit juice, which, by the way, has more sugar than Coca-Cola, and also eating more than a stomach could handle, leading me to be severely overweight in my preteen years. I moved out of the home when I was 12 years young, changing my life forever. It was a year of many firsts. In my new home, I had a vegetable garden, and for the first time, I found out what real food was, how it grew, and the importance of nurturing a garden. I was empowering myself to save my own life through nutrition, patience, determination, and love."

So as you can imagine, Belle's success with her cookbook and with her app not only propelled her brand forward, but it also earned her significant industry recognition. Cosmo Magazine awarded her the Fun, Fearless Female Social Media Award, and Elle Magazine also published a feature about Belle titled, The Most Inspiring Woman You've Met This Year. Both were a testament to her growing influence and the impact that she was making in the wellness community. And around that same time, Apple also reached out with very exciting news. They were preparing to launch the Apple Watch in 2015, and they announced that Belle's app was going to be one of the first apps that was automatically downloaded on the watch.

So this integration not only underscored the popularity of her app and what really it meant and how impactful it was, but it also marked a turning point in Belle's career. Kind of just like catapulting her into the tech world, into this new realm of mainstream recognition. No longer was she this isolated Australian wellness guru. She was now on a massive global scale, partnering with Apple. I mean, this was huge.

And with all of this success, she found herself living a life and a lifestyle, I could say, that people only dreamed of. While she continued to donate a ton of her money to different charities, different organizations that were important to her, she also used her newfound wealth to buy a lot of luxuries in her life. She purchased designer clothing.

She moved into this very lavish apartment. She seemed to acquire anything that she ever wanted with ease. No struggle in the world. And to many, it was inspiring. Like, look at this poor girl from a rough background who worked tirelessly to defy the odds and she pulled herself up by her bootstraps. She's so successful now. She's rich.

She's famous. She has everything. She's healthy. Yet behind all of that glittery success and the everything on the surface, the facade that was out there, there started to be some doubts that started creeping in. People who were starting to question the authenticity of some of Bell's claims. The Stubborn Fat Question 1. When you lose weight, does the stubborn fat stay in your problem areas?

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Visit BetterHelp.com.au to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp.com.au. Critics started questioning the validity of Belle's health story, and prominent cancer researchers also publicly challenged her holistic approach, arguing that there was no scientific basis for curing a malignant brain tumor through a diet of fruits, veggies, and coffee enemas. However, whenever anybody would just voice skepticism, her supporters just kind of all came out rallied to her defense. We've seen that, right? On YouTube, podcasts, wherever it may be, when the trolls come out, the army comes full force and like counteracts them. They would dismiss all of these critics saying,

they're just agents of big pharma. They don't even know what they're talking about. Her unconventional methods, they were working. They're the true path to healing. Look at her, she's a walking example of it. But adding fuel to the fire were also the contradictions in her public statements. On one hand, her cookbook proclaimed that she had been stable for two years with no growth of cancer, yet around the same time that her book was released, she also wrote

on social media that her cancer was spreading. So which was it? She wrote, With frustration and ache in my heart, it hurts me to find space tonight to let you all know with love and strength that I have been diagnosed with a third and fourth cancer. One is secondary and the other is primary. I have cancer in my blood, spleen, brain, uterus, and liver. I am hurting."

So this was a huge inconsistency, right? I mean, if her methods worked so well, why was she getting worse? Why was it spreading? So it cast a lot of doubt on whether or not her approach really was working, whether or not she was somebody who could be trusted. And the controversy surrounding her wasn't also without real-world consequences, because some followers who were desperate for a cure, they abandoned conventional methods. They abandoned modern medicine and just started following her recommendations. One woman, Kylie Willey, recounted how she even delayed standard treatment for her leukemia just so that she could follow Belle's advice. And as a result, she nearly lost her life.

Because once she started following Belle's advice, Kylie didn't get better. She got much, much worse. Thankfully, she abandoned Belle's methods almost as quickly as she started them. And then she went back to receiving treatment recommended by her doctor. So thankfully she recovered, but she wondered what may have happened if she continued to follow Belle's advice.

I was at my girlfriend's hair salon and it flicked up on my social media that Belle Gibson had lied. I just burst out straight away saying, Oh my God, Belle Gibson is a liar. I don't know, I felt betrayed and a little bit let down by her. And then the absolute mind blowing, why the hell would you do that?

Why would you pretend to have cancer? Like, what the hell? I felt like it made me look like an idiot. People also wondered why Belle would invest so much time, so much money, so much effort into building this app and writing a book if she truly believed that she was dying. There were so many questions. I mean, why wasn't she more terrified

upon learning that she was pregnant, given her supposed terminal diagnosis? And why did she describe her brain tumor as stage two, when brain cancers are typically classified by grades rather than stages? So in the midst of like her rising fame, her luxurious lifestyle, all of these things, these contradictions and these controversies

began to ruin the trust of some of Bell's loyal followers. While some of her supporters remained, yes, like fiercely loyal, other people also started noticing a pattern of inconsistency, and that started calling into question the claims that she had built this entire business, this entire career and empire on. And these suspicions were not limited to the medical community and to Belle's supporters. Close friends were also starting to question Belle's claims. One friend even started noticing that whenever Belle said that she was going to doctor's

appointments and she claimed that these appointments were cancer related, she was actually going to appointments for cosmetic procedures, like Botox or getting veneers. Which is obviously much different than going to a cancer treatment facility. If you're just like walking into an injector, it makes no sense. And by early 2015, Chanel, one of Belle's closest friends, had begun to suspect that something was off with Belle's claims about having cancer. Chanel and Belle had met back in 2012 or 2013

when Chanel, then a journalist intern, was assigned to interview Belle. Their initial connection grew very quickly and soon they became very close friends. However, over time, small red flags began to accumulate. For instance, Belle once asked Chanel to cook meals for the Schwartz family. Remember Joshua, the little boy who had cancer,

the family that she claimed to be supporting because their young son was battling brain cancer? So Chanel, always eager to help, had spent two full days preparing a huge batch of very nutritious meals, things for this family, believing these meals were meant for the Schwartz family. It was going to help them. It was one less thing for them to think about and it would really, you know, be a nice thing to do. However, during a visit to Belle's home, Chanel was very surprised when she found that these meals

were all still packed away in Belle's refrigerator, Untouched. Never delivered. So it became painfully clear that Belle had misled her at some point along the way, using this guise of charity to convince Chanel to cook while secretly then keeping the food for herself. And her suspicions only got worse, because things weren't aligning with somebody who was fighting a terminal illness. Belle was often seen drinking, doing drugs, eating junk a lot of time in tanning lifestyle that is complet only from someone who is

what you would expect the so different from the lif portraying on social media she was putting out there to not add up for me. There was a few things that happened, like excessive drinking of alcohol, going to a solarium, and tanning.

Obviously, skin cancer is a really big issue here in Australia. So those things didn't really make sense to me. I had a family friend who passed away of cancer and I had witnessed their journey with it so I was kind of aware of someone who is actually very sick of cancer and what that looks like and they get to the point where they're very frail and bedridden. And Belle was never presented those kind of symptoms. She was always very active, very well, kind of thriving, running a business empire.

Now the tipping point for all of this came one night at a birthday party for Belle's son, Oliver. Because as the event started to wind down, something truly crazy happened. Belle just collapsed right there on the floor. She started convulsing. Saliva was coming out of her mouth. Her body was shaking uncontrollably.

It was extremely scary. Chanel started screaming for an ambulance, but she saw Belle then abruptly, when she started screaming for the ambulance, like snap back to normal and dismiss the entire incident, saying, I don't want Western medicine interfering. I'm supposed to be healing naturally. Don't call anybody. I'm fine. I'm fine. But it was almost like that jolt of where Belle kind of snapped out of this seizure or whatever you would call it

only happened when Chanel was going to call an ambulance. So she was completely disturbed by this and she started questioning whether Belle was kind of So she was completely disturbed by this and she started questioning whether Belle was kind of mimicking the symptoms of cancer patients, all to make her illness feel more genuine, to sell her story, to make it feel more real. Then after witnessing Belle at a bar one night, taking shots, ripping shots,

Chanel started confiding in mutual friends, being like, something's up here. Something doesn't feel right. She was sharing her doubts with them. She was just kind of being like, this doesn't track, this isn't making sense. And a lot of them were also starting to wonder if Bell's stories were true. So that very night, the group of friends decided they were going to confront Bell at her apartment. Chanel very quickly just bluntly said, hey, are you sick? Tell me yes or no. Are you sick? But Bell's

reply was extremely vague and very defensive. She just simply replied saying, of course I am. I arrived at her house one night, basically kind of unannounced, with another friend. I was kind of very straightforward with her, said, are you sick? I basically demanded to see evidence of her cancer. I asked her to go get any scans, doctor's reports, surgeon's reports, any medical evidence she would have in her home.

She said she didn't like to keep that type of evidence because it's negative energy. So as the conversation progressed and what is now dubbed the intervention from that night, just every answer she was giving me was just confirming my gut instinct that she was lying. She had just announced that her cancer had spread, it was stage four and I asked her where she got that diagnosis up at what hospital she said she didn't go to a hospital. She went to

some random doctor's house and I asked her that doctor was and she said Doctor Phil and as the conversation continued, she just grew more and more defensive. She insisted that she truly did have cancer, yet every response she was giving, it just made the group doubt her more. And Chanel was urging Belle, just come clean. You don't even realize

how much harm you're causing. You just need to tell the truth. But Belle refused to admit that she was lying. So Chanel, feeling like Belle's lies could mislead others, she decided she was going to take further action. She reached out to lawyers, law enforcement, and even investigative journalists, all of which initially said they couldn't help her. But word of Chanel's concerns eventually reached two reporters from a publication called The Age. Using the information provided by Chanel and a few other people who were close to Belle, they then began investigating Belle's story, ultimately uncovering mounting evidence that suggested Belle had fabricated her

entire diagnosis. However, it was really hard to prove that Belle was lying about her medical death and having cancer because they wouldn't have immediate access to her medical files. But then the lightbulb kind of went off to her. They're like, okay, well, if she's lying about her medical files, but then the lightbulb kind of went off to her. They're like, okay, well if she's lying about her medical diagnosis, what else could she be lying about? So one of the first lies that they uncovered was her age. Belle had long maintained an image of maturity that didn't quite match her background, but remember, she also said that she had to grow up very early, that she like was thrown into adulthood. She even claimed to have had her son when she was 20 years old, when in fact, records later showed that she was only thrown into adulthood. She even claimed to have had her son when she was 20 years old, when in fact records later showed

that she was only 17 years old at the time. So it seemed like she deliberately made herself older to sound more credible. And then after these reporters started speaking to former friends of Belle's, all of these stories started coming out about how she would have this reputation for embellishing stories or lying or making

things up all before her wellness career took off. That she would lie for attention constantly and then she just, you know, boom, made it. One friend even recounted an incident where Belle faked a heart attack while others said yeah and sometimes she would also show up to school with her arm in a sling pretending she had broken it. She also told people she was a test tube baby. Anything to give her, you know, a little edge, a little bit of tension, and it got to the point where nobody believed her and everybody was like, okay, sure, Belle, okay. Like, just no weight in her stories

anymore. But the biggest issue turned out to be her claims about the charity. Remember, Belle often bragged about donating huge chunks of her profits. She even said that she had given away $300,000 to nearly 20 different causes, causes like maternal healthcare, human rights, community projects, even direct support for families who were in crisis. But when these reporters dug deeper, they found almost no evidence that any of this money

had ever gone to the intended charities. And many of the organizations that Belle had mentioned weren't even aware that they were being used to boost her image. And records only showed donations totaling around $7,000 over the course of several years. Nowhere near the amount that she had claimed. And one case that really stood out, of course, was the Schwartz family, little Joshua. Bell had written about their son in her cookbook. She had described him as this little man after her own heart, talking about how they had this

unintimidated friendship and how she could relate to him so much. She even had organized fundraising for this family. But when the journalists reached out to them, they said they had never even received a dime from Bell, that they didn't even know that she was raising money for them. And Joshua's mom also said, you know, Bell was asking us a lot of questions about Joshua's diagnosis, details about it, almost like she was trying to gather that information to then use it as her own story for her own health. The whole thing was starting to unravel. So in March of 2015, The Age published an article and it laid out all of these

discrepancies. It highlighted Bell's fake age, her sketchy charity claims, her friends casting doubt and painting her as having a reputation as a liar, and this had a huge response from the community. It went viral. Suddenly, every single claim that Belle had ever made, whether it's about her health, about her donations, it was all under serious scrutiny. After the article, even the institutions that had once backed Belle began to rethink their support. Penguin, the publisher of her cookbook, eventually revealed that they never found any evidence to

back up Belle's claim that she had cancer. They simply had just taken her word for it. I mean, after all, who would ever lie about something so serious? Cosmo, the magazine behind that award, also later admitted they never actually fact-checked Belle's claims. At first, they defended her, claiming that the award was determined by reader votes and that Belle won fair and square, but as backlash just continued to mount and brew, then they started feeling the pressure and they ended up pulling back and rescinding the award from Belle. And around that same time, Elle Magazine, that magazine that published the in-depth story about Bell, they disclosed that shortly after their article went live,

they received an anonymous email. This email read, "'It has come to my attention that you have published "'a story about a girl I have known my whole life. "'Her name is Bell Gibson, "'creator of the Whole Pantry app and book, "'and she's also the so-called terminal cancer patient. Unfortunately, there are a few things that you might need to know before you consider

publishing more about this woman. She is a compulsive liar. In fact, she got so tangled in her own web of lies living in Brisbane that she moved to Melbourne to start a new life of lies, the cancer lie this time. For one, this girl isn't 26 years old. She was born in 1991, class of 08 at Wynum High School in Queensland. My younger brother was in her class. Secondly, she never had nor does she currently have any form of cancer. Where's the proof? I've known Belle since her childhood and I'm close with her mother and she has always had a problem with fabricating stories from nothing on a regular basis. It's one thing to act as if she can cure her cancer

by eating organic, which simply isn't true, but to give false hope to people who are actually fighting cancer is nothing short of evil. You must be aware of this before you publish stories about this woman. She is selling her fake sob story in order to profit from her app and her book sales. She is a wolf in sheep's clothing and a master manipulator.

Sincerely, sick of seeing her lies published." Now the magazine said that they didn't believe this email at first, but then after that article from The Age was released, they were starting to wonder if this anonymous person who wrote this letter was in fact telling the truth. So, facing mounting backlash and growing scrutiny, So, facing mounting backlash and growing scrutiny, Belle began to backpedal. Started to change her story. Sort of. I don't know about you guys, but I've told you I think before, getting my kids to eat all their veggies and don't even get me started on vitamins because most of them are

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One of Belle's first moves when she started backpedaling was to claim that a 2013 fundraising event had actually been an app launch party. So in other words, she was trying to say the event wasn't some attempt to raise money that never went to charity. No, it was, you know, a launch party. It was to celebrate. However, the invitation for the event told a very different story. It clearly listed three charities on it.

One that was dedicated to building schools in Sierra Leone, another supporting mothers and their babies in developing countries, and a third aiming at helping a critically ill five-year-old receive life-saving treatments overseas. The invitation even included a link to a website that's titled The Whole Pantry Community and Charity Celebrations, which stated that ticket sale proceeds would go towards four charities that the community was passionate about. There was also another campaign in May of 2014 claiming that the proceeds from app sales would be donated to two charities. But shocker, as it turns out, neither charity ever received a single cent from Bell's company.

Yet still, she tried to argue that these events, they were not fundraising events at all. Now when these simple explanations didn't put people at ease and calm people down, and when the scrutiny continued, you know, not even circulating, but actually growing, she decided to turn to social media to fight back. And she urged her followers to attack the journalists who were exposing her, accusing them of knowingly contributing to the blatant attacking and bullying of myself and my family." At the direct quote. But even now, this aggressive stance, it wasn't going to combat the mounting evidence against

her, right? So in a desperate attempt to cover her tracks, Belle began erasing her digital footprint entirely. She deleted posts that referenced her illness, she deleted posts that referenced her charity work, she removed comments questioning her claims, and she wiped out most of her posts from 2010 to 2012. Her whole pantry Facebook page and Twitter account also vanished, and thousands of photos disappeared from her personal and professional Instagram profiles.

This frantic clean-up of course only deepened suspicions though that her carefully curated story was just entirely built on a web of deception, and now she wanted to eliminate any trace of it. She wanted to clean it up like it never happened, so people wouldn't have the proof or couldn't start piecing together the puzzle pieces of this whole elaborate lie. Then there was also an account that was under the name Harry Gibson, and it was aggressively attacking anybody who dared to question Bell's claims. Investigator reporters very quickly determined that this Harry Gibson was none other than Bell herself, which I gotta say, if you're gonna use a pseudonym to try to like pretend to be somebody else to defend yourself,

maybe don't use the same last name that you have. Right? Like maybe that's a way to start. I don't know. So as more journalists began exposing her story, Bell's desperation became evident. In one particularly aggressive move, she reached out directly to a reporter and she accused them of pushing people to the brink of suicide with the stories about her, saying, You're writing such terrible things about me. It's making other people suicidal. It's making them want to kill themselves. You need to stop.

Which this was just another reminder that she would go to any lengths to defend her narrative. But under this mounting pressure, Bell eventually had to address the controversy over all of her charitable contributions. She admitted that the donations that she had promised were in fact delayed, but that it was because of poor record keeping and cash flow problems. It wasn't at all because she was planning on keeping this money for herself. She blamed disappointing sales and miscalculated profits

for the setbacks, insisting that the money was still earmarked for donation. The whole pantry's business page even released an official statement saying, TWP's new business management and accounts team are working through the workload of bringing the accounts and businesses up to date, and all charities have been openly communicated with, and they are aware of our intentions to uphold this financial support when the necessary keeping of the business are finalized." Now I'll be honest, that kind of makes sense to me, but it also kind of feels like a word salad, but okay, at least she was addressing it and making a statement, right? But there was still public outrage. People were pissed and things continued to unravel for Bell.

A few months after that first article, she finally agreed to do an interview with Australian Women's Weekly. And I gotta be honest, she thought this was a strategic move, but it was a decision that only ended up hurting her more in the long run. Because in that interview, Bell admitted that the stories that she had spun about her cancer were all fake. Well, not all of them, but at least the recent claims of her being diagnosed with a third and fourth cancer and its spreading. Yet, even as she admitted that these stories were untrue, she maintained that her alternative therapies had been her lifeline in fighting what she once claimed was an aggressive brain tumor for five years. She said, quote, none of it's true. I don't want forgiveness. I just think speaking out

was the responsible thing to do. She went on to explain that there was a point where she truly believed she had cancer, but that the lack of clear answers from her doctors led her to start theorizing on her own. She tried to explain her actions away too by saying, if I don't have an answer, then I will sort of come up with one.

It's easy to do when you're left in the dark. Now, the most surprising thing about this interview was that Belle showed absolutely zero remorse for lying. Instead, she attributed her lies and her fabrications all back to her troubled childhood, to her rough upbringing. She really blamed her estranged mother for leaving her and for making her fend for herself starting at the age of five. Yet this explanation, which I believe was carefully curated to evoke sympathy, it felt flat for a lot of people and it felt like a really bad justification for such a horrible lie. So shortly after this interview, Belle then appeared on 60 Minutes Australia in what would

become one of the most infamous interviews of her entire career. In this interview, she looked clean, refreshed, she had this huge hot pink lip gloss and hot pink turtleneck sweater on, which I honestly, I'm gonna tell you, I thought about wearing a hot pink turtleneck for this episode. I don't own one though, but I was like, that'd be so funny if I just like dressed like her. I don't know, just because she looks like such a fricking try hard. But anyway, it seemed like she was doing this to portray herself as super polished

and also to like distract people a little bit, if that makes sense, I don't know. But in this interview, she tried to make every excuse possible to defend why she lied about everything. Everything from her early claims of those heart issues to then those later claims of brain cancer. Were you in hospital at the time that you were posting these?

No. I mean, you go into extraordinary details. I had surgery about seven hours ago. The doctor comes in and tells me the draining failed and I went into cardiac arrest and died for just under three minutes and I went into cardiac arrest and died for just under three minutes. I had the most intense bruising from the paddles

when they electrocuted me back to consciousness. Minus the wires and constant throwing up of blood. Anyway, the procedure failed and I died. See, I haven't read back through all of that, but I also think when you're young and have gone through the situation I had just gone through, you are melodramatic. I don't have. Melodramatic now? I mean, they're straight out lies. You weren't in hospital. You're claiming you were. You claimed you died twice. You didn't. You claimed you had two cardiac arrests. You didn't. That's not melodramatic. That's straight out lying.

It is. Extraordinary lies. And if you lie about that and you go to those extraordinary lengths to create the story around that lie, how can we believe anything you say now? Tara, I have lost everything and I'm not here to regain it. But when you hit rock bottom, there is only an opportunity to be honest and to heal and to apologize. And I'm here to do that.

There is no reason for me to lie and it's not something I want to be doing either. So I didn't know whether I was getting worse. I didn't know if I was getting better. I didn't know if it was the same. I thought that it was important to go and seek a scan and be confident in where I stood. I don't mean to be crass about it, but it was also the fact that despite being given

a four month deadline, you're still alive. Yeah. Was that an indicator to you that you didn't have brain cancer? been given a four-month deadline, you're still alive. Yeah. Was that an indicator to you that you didn't have brain cancer? It wasn't an indicator. I went to the Alfred hospital and I contacted Mark and I said to him, I'm not sure where things are at, so I want to go and get a brain scan. He had me sign paperwork which enlisted him as my medical professional,

where the scan from the Alfred would be then passed on to him so we could also consult on it. Right. So what did the brain scan show? He brought in scans and it showed a brain tumour. But that wasn't my scan, because most recently, I went back to the Alfred and I got my full portfolio from them. And I did get that brain scan, but there is no brain tumour there. OK, so what date was that, Bell? When did you go to the Alfred?

I will be able to give you this information. Well, we've already asked for background information. We've asked for all your medical records and your medical history. You haven't given us any dates. You haven't given us any brain scans. You haven't given us any MRIs. You haven't given us any tissue tests. You haven't given us anything.

I wasn't explicitly asked for any of that, but I have it. Well, really? Of course I do. The producers I've been working with are aware of my health position but I haven't. Well, really? Of course I do. The producers I've been working with are aware of my health position. I wasn't- Bell, Bell, Bell, Bell, please. I mean, I know that you're interested in getting to the bottom of this

and presenting the facts as they are. The facts or you're not. Now, instead of providing clarification, this interview, it just caused more confusion, because this time, she claimed that she had been wrongfully diagnosed with cancer, that a German alternative medicine practitioner back in 2009 is the one who diagnosed her with brain cancer, and that it was a misdiagnosis, so she can't be held responsible for this. And according to this new story, she truly did believe that she was dying, and she underwent this German's quote magnetic therapy, mistakenly thinking that it was a form of radiation treatment

that was meant to cure her cancer. When she was pressed by the interviewer to name the doctor who misdiagnosed her, she couldn't provide a name though. Instead, she maintained, I've not been intentionally untruthful. I have been openly speaking about what was my reality." Which, I'm going to say that again, because it is very smart and very carefully worded. I've not been intentionally untruthful. I've been openly speaking about what was my reality. Kind of creating this loophole to say, even though I didn't have cancer, it was my reality at the time

that I did. I thought that I did, so I can't have cancer, it was my reality at the time that I did. I thought that I did, so I can't be held responsible for this. To where the accountability doesn't quite fall on her from an outsider's point of view, it certainly does, but just very careful with the words that she's using. Bell also admitted that by 2011, she realized that this German doctor had misdiagnosed her, yet she still claimed that something was wrong. She just didn't know what. So she insisted that she was still trying to make sense of everything. She was still trying to figure out what was happening with her body. She was seeking

treatment from conventional medical professionals. She was struggling to define her own symptoms. She was just trying to figure it out. So then when she was asked by this interviewer directly, did you have cancer? She hesitated a little bit, but then she replied, I really, really hope not. And eventually this interview just went off the rails and got so ridiculous, Belle couldn't even give a straight answer to the most simplest of questions. Did you live in fear of being found out? No, because I wasn't living in a space where I didn't know that this wasn't my reality. Would you accept that you're a pathological liar? No. Do you take responsibility

for driving any people away from conventional medicine in seeking treatment for their cancer? That would be really heartbreaking to me because I never intended on doing that. Do you accept that that's what you might have done? I accept that might have happened. Well, actually, how old are you? I've always been raised as being currently a 26-year-old. How old are you?

Well, I live knowing, as I've always known, that I would be 26. Okay, Bill. This is a really, really simple question. How old are you? I believe that I'm 26. I have two birth certificates and I've had my name changed four times. The identity crisis there is big, but that was my normal when I was growing up, Tara, that... What do you know the truth to be now? That's probably a question that we'll have to keep digging for because it's not something I've ever understood

or had answers around. So when you needed to file some financial documents, how did you choose the birthdate you gave? With my most recent deed poll paper, which has the younger of the age and the most recent of the name. Right. So currently, then according to those documents, you're 23. Correct. Tara, I'm trying to draw on information.

No, no, don't draw on information. Just be honest. I am being honest with you. I'm trying to be open to what you're saying, but you were just muddying the waters with every answer. I mean, word salad, but also so roundabout and loony-tune, it's just bizarre to me. So as the controversy deepened, the fallout happened pretty quickly. Apple, who was once super excited and eager to feature her app on their brand new Apple Watch, they announced that not only are they not featuring her app on the watch,

they're removing her app from the entire lineup, the entire thing. And not long after that, her cookbook was pulled from shelves, her publishing company dropped her altogether, it was like everything. The house of cards. It was all starting to fall. And in the midst of all this unraveling, even more voices started emerging, shedding light on the many, many layers of Belle's deception. And one of the most striking revelations came from her own family.

Belle's own stepfather stepped forward to tell a very different story. He admitted that her childhood, yes, had been far from easy, and Belle did indeed leave home around the age of 12, but instead of disappearing and bouncing from friend house to friend house and couch surfing, she moved in with an older male neighbor, a man who lived just down the street from her mother. Which, I have to say, that is really crazy. What kind of mother, in their right mind, would allow their 12-year-old daughter to move out and go live with an older adult male

who has no relation to the family? I mean, I don't want to speculate, but I can only imagine what probably went on in that house. It can't be good. Now, Belle's mother later spoke out too, offering a very different account of Belle's childhood. When it came to Belle's claims about her childhood, her mom said, quote, And adding to this mounting evidence against Belle and all of her claims, her brother Nick also broke his silence in an interview.

He confirmed he was not autistic, and he also expressed genuine confusion over why Belle would have described him that way. He recalled that he and Belle had been close when they were younger, but then as they grew older, he noticed a disturbing shift in her behaviour. I don't like that hate word. But sometimes I feel like turning around to her and saying, Belle, I hate you. What has your sister done to your life? She's stuffed it up real bad. I've had to go through counselling myself. I don't like to be in public.

I've had people come up to me and ask me questions, and they think I'm like her when I'm nothing like her. But I really hope she does watch this and see how much I am hurting. You are, aren't you? You're broken. she does watch this and see how much I am hurting. You are, aren't you? You're broken. I am. You know, my kids see me hurting as well.

I don't have autism at all, no. Even when I was a kid, she used to call me retard. What did that make you think about yourself growing up? I hated myself, you know. I just, I didn't want to be around. I was shy, placid, and I didn't like to be out in the public, just because things she said. And she's come out and said that you're virtually non-verbal.

That's correct. I talk to a lot of people. I do have trouble with reading or writing, but that's, you know, it's always been the case. She knows what she's done and said is completely wrong. Like, it's... it's embarrassing. So with family members coming forward, friends speaking out, cracks in her story widening, I mean, it was only a matter of time until House of Belle was going to be, like, just rubble, right?

And by May of 2016, Consumer Affairs announced that they were seeking legal action against Belle. This legal action was for making false claims about a terminal brain cancer diagnosis and for, of course, fabricating charity donations. So as legal action ramped up, the case against Bell eventually reached the federal courts and the courts gave her a fine that totaled to $410,000. The $410,000 divides differently. Some of it was for that one week of whole pantry sales

that was supposed to go towards the family. Other was for not donating proceeds from the apps launch. Another was from a fundraising event, but in total, everything came up to 410. to go towards the family, other was for not donating proceeds from the app's launch, another was from a fundraising event, but in total, everything came up to $410. Meanwhile, Penguin Books, who had published her cookbook without verifying her claims, was also forced to pay a fine of $30,000. They paid this fine almost immediately, because they just wanted to completely distance themselves from Belle, which I don't blame them for that.

And by March of 2017, the Federal Court of Australia delivered its final ruling. There was no evidence that Bell ever had cancer and her claims about curing it with natural remedies, they were entirely false. Yet the judge noted that Bell appeared to have acted out of delusion rather than with criminal intent. The judge said, quote,

"'She played on the empathy and generosity of the Australian community. Her pitch overwhelmingly used groups likely to evoke sympathy because of their vulnerabilities. Young girls, asylum seekers, and young children. Now by 2019, Belle didn't pay any of her fines, still hadn't paid a single cent. So she was ordered to appear in court or face jail time. And when she finally showed up to court later that year, I gotta say the balls of this woman, because she was wearing a brand new dress,

$400 St. Laurent sunglasses, all while claiming she had no money and that's why she couldn't pay these fines. And her financial statements did paint, I will say, a pretty grim picture. She was nearly 170 grand in debt, and she only had $5,000 to her name. However, we also know when people are that savvy and when they want to, they can hide money elsewhere. They can park it in different places and you can look like you have no money. But what made this situation even more confusing was that by this point, Bell had also relocated to the United States

because she wanted to get away from all the criticism that was back home in Australia. So now she was living in LA and she was living in a very lavish home. Her son was attending a private school, her partner Clive sent them on an extravagant vacation to Africa. So like clearly this chick still had money.

Reports even revealed that between 2017 and 2019, Belle spent nearly $90,000 on designer clothing, on makeup, and accessories. So, hardly the habits of somebody who is facing severe financial distress or ruin. But like I said, you can park your money if you're smart enough, and you can make it look like you have no money. It's been almost two years since she was found guilty of misleading and deceptive conduct and ordered to pay $410,000. Until now, Belle Gibson has thumbed her nose at authorities and ignored that fine. Today Gibson stepped into the witness box when asked about Clive Rothwell, the man she's

been living with since 2015. She said he's just a friend. She claims he often pays the $600 a week rent for their Northcote home when she can't afford it. When asked what Clive does for work, Bell said, I'm not sure. When asked if she knows his income, she said, it's not my business. It's very odd that you're saying that Clive's just a friend. I think everyone's got a few questions about that.

Do you have anything to say? A source close to the family has told A Current Affair that Belle and Clive have been in a relationship for years. Belle Gibson told the court that she lives on Centlink benefits and receives child support payments for her son. Just three months ago, A Current Affair caught the Queen of Con returning from a luxury overseas holiday.

Don't you think it's more important to be paying back that fine rather than going on an overseas trip? Gibson enjoyed a month in Kenya and Ethiopia with her eight-year-old son. Belle, you've scammed the people of Australia. Don't you have anything to say? Lawyer Justin Lawrence. I think there's no doubt the consumer affairs have watched the story. They've looked at it and they've said, maybe she's got resources.

Maybe she's got money in the bank. Maybe she's got access to money. We need to look a bit more closely at this to determine exactly what she does have. Because right now, what we know is she hasn't paid a cent to anybody, yet she's traveling over the other side of the world, potentially spending tens of thousands of dollars on expensive holidays.

The East African safari and flights were a big focus of today's examination. Gibson telling the court the trip was a gift from Clive with an estimated price tag of $5,000. When asked how Clive paid for it, Gibson said, I don't know. Another hot topic was Gibson's choice of wardrobe. So in 2020, with no resolution in sight, the Sheriff's Office in Australia decided to take action.

They ended up raiding her property, and when they did that, they seized belongings of hers that would cover the amount of fines that she still owed, which also, thanks to accumulating interest, she now owed over half a million dollars. But even with this raid by the sheriff's office, Belle's financial situation remained unresolved. By 2021, she still hadn't paid off any of her fines, and by May 21st of that year, the authorities ended up raiding her home once again. But to this day, Belle still has not paid her fines. And that to me just shows she has no remorse for what she's done. Not even trying to be remorseful.

She doesn't care. And that also takes me back to, I think this was done with criminal intent, even though the judge ruled it as delusion. No, this is calculated. This is gross. This is like, I don't like it. It feels disgusting. At this point, she also pretty much vanished from the public eye. She briefly reappeared in 2020, sparking a fresh wave of controversy. Videos emerged showing her claiming that she had now been adopted by a local Ethiopian community, and she even appeared in a video referring to Ethiopia as quote, being back

home. Presently, when you speak to those back home, people are being arrested, people are being shot in the street because of their Oromo identity. You know, like the madness that is happening in the last week came as a complete shock to everybody. Abiy has a chance to change this. He has a chance to liberate the entire nation of Ethiopia. Not just one subsection of the country. He has a chance to unify everyone. The eyes of the world are watching him, especially after he won the Nobel Peace Prize. Everyone

is looking and only after a few days of accepting this, we've got almost a civil war breaking up. People are looking. He has a chance to change this but we are losing faith that that's his intention. All right, thanks Sabuntu. And so today, you know, that's what the oldest in the Oromo community gathered together to have a chat about what's going on in Oromia and they want to support people that who's been injured and then who's been arrested or like someone who's going through hard time at the moment in Oromia. So like, do you have any advice for Oromo people that are around the world?

My advice is in line with our hero Joa. You know, let's look to the Jasa, just like the Gada system teaches us, like how forefathers have taught us, like how leaders are telling us now. Conduct yourself with some Safu, hold yourself, Don't make it worse for our people at this time. Defend yourselves and defend your honor. Defend your identity. Sleep with one eye open. She insisted on being called Sabon 2 and she appeared in these videos

attending community events, weddings, meetings, and just casual neighborhood barbecues. It was almost like she was now, once again, embracing an entirely new identity. However, this community's warm welcome? It was short-lived, because once these videos circulated, all of these concerned locals began receiving messages from outsiders warning them about Belle, about her lies, her notorious past, her history of using people. So the community, already kind of confused about where Belle came from, they grew increasingly suspicious.

Initially, the group's leader had assumed that Belle might simply be a girlfriend or a relative of one of the members. But then as time went on, Belle's behavior raised even more red flags because she started asking community members questions about their personal financial situations. So these questions, combined with the warnings from outsiders, convinced this Ethiopian community that something just was not right here with Belle. So in a move to protect their group, the leaders expelled Belle. They barred her from any future events.

They were like, no, get out of here, good riddance. Soon after that, her relationship with Clive also started to unravel, though the full details they remain a little bit unknown. Clive has been by her side through all of the ups and downs, living with her, supporting her, even raising her son, their son, Oliver, together. Some people theorized that he was well aware of the inconsistencies in Belle's story, but that he chose to overlook them, just happy to ride the coattails of all of her success, while others believe that his deep bond that he shares with Oliver is what led him to suppress

his doubts, all in order to maintain stability for the family and for Oliver, who he treats as his own son. Now, even as the layers of her personal life and her lies and everything she did, the deception, even as those layers are peeled back, the true motivations behind Belle's elaborate web of lies, it's still a mystery, right? What did she do this for? Why did she lie? I personally think it was for attention.

And then when she started realizing she could get even more attention with a book, with this and that, and started to see the influx of money, I think then it became more financially motivated. But I don't think that it stems from that. I don't think the root was for money. I think it it became more financially motivated, but I don't think that it stems from that. I don't think the root was for money. I think it truly was for attention and maybe even acceptance, which is kind of sad,

but also kind of desperado and like certainly not a good enough excuse to do what she had done. Now, some people believe that her entire act was an attempt to emulate another Australian wellness creator named Jess. Jess had already made a name for herself by documenting her own battle with cancer

and also by speaking out in support of alternative therapies like Gerson therapy and coffee enemas and all of that. Now, although it wasn't brain cancer, unlike Belle, Jess actually faced a rare aggressive form of skin cancer, which even led doctors to recommend amputating her arm. But Jess chose to fight back with alternative treatments, and she shared every raw detail of her journey online, even announcing that her mother had been diagnosed

with breast cancer and was following the same treatment plan as she was. In therapy, but it's a very intense, completely natural treatment modality that involves loading the body up with all the nutrients it needs to heal and detoxifying it of everything that is getting in the way of healing. And so I went over to Mexico with my mum and I spent three weeks at the Gerson Clinic learning how to implement this

therapy in my life. It was 13 glasses of fresh organic veggie juice every day, one on the hour from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed. It's completely overhauling your diet to eat three massive all organic vegan meals that have no salt, no sugar, no fat, no spices, no herbs, no caffeine, no drugs, no alcohol. Everything that was a staple of my diet for the first 22 years was gone and replaced by plants and juice. And then there was the castor oil, which we had to drink orally every second day to clean out that small intestines to give us the runs and make us feel like we have a hangover every

second day. And then there was my favourite part of the whole therapy which was the coffee enemas and putting five buckets of coffee up my bottom every single day. It seriously is the best part. You get 30 minutes alone to yourself in the bathroom five times a day. It's great. And I did all of this religiously for two whole years, dedicated every waking hour to saving my own life. And I did this because very early on in my journey I called up one of the counsellors at the Gula Foundation and I was really probing her about Ian's story and how he did it.

And the one thing that she said to me that really stuck with me through all of it was that everything that you do needs to be to heal your body. Every single thing, every act that you take, it needs to be in the act of healing your body. Be radically kind to yourselves. Be brave enough to follow your intuition even when it's really, scary and always always always be really well Thank you so much for hearing me speak and thank you so much to Ian Eventually Jess's mom passed away in 2013 and after her mom, Jess began to realize that her holistic treatments just were not working. So then she tried to seek conventional medical care, but unfortunately it was too late. The cancer had spread throughout her entire body and it could no longer respond

to treatment. So Jess herself passed away in 2015, around seven years after she was initially diagnosed with cancer. So there are reports that Belle even showed up to Jess's funeral, even though she was never invited. But Belle always tried to make it seem like to the outside world that she was good friends with Jess. Yet they didn't know each other very well at all. They just happened to run in the same internet circles, the same wellness circles. And at the funeral, in true Belle fashion, she tried to make it all about herself. She was wailing, she was crying so loudly, so much that people couldn't even concentrate on the service that was happening. A lot of people think that all of her outrageous lies are basically, like I said, just a cry for attention. Friends have always said that she was an attention seeker, even from a very young age.

And that if she was never the center of conversation, she would just come up with like crazy stories and crazy lies to stay in the spotlight. Some even suggested that she might suffer from having munchausens, which basically is when somebody deliberately exaggerates or makes up symptoms to get sympathy or makes themselves sick. In the end, whether it was an attempt to copy Jess because of the attention Jess was getting and the accolades that Jess was getting or just this constant need for validation or I don't know, something maybe even deeper. The real reasons behind Belle's elaborate lies and this hoax still remain unclear. And like I said, that Netflix show, Apple Cider Vinegar, it doesn't always clear things

up. It kind of invents characters and storylines for the show that are like true-ish, but not all true and they don't really match reality. There are lists online of all of the differences between the show and what actually happened, which you can look up. But one example is that in Apple Cider Vinegar, there is a character who is loosely depicted and based on Jess, the actual young woman who died from cancer. And her family is not happy with how in the Netflix dramatization, this character is depicted as sort of like this jealous rival with Belle. There was never any

jealousy like that. There was never any sort of rivalry. So again, they base it loosely on a story, but then they exaggerate certain storylines to enhance the interest, the production value, all of those things. And Chanel, the friend who initially confronted Belle about her lies and called her out and then even went to the press and to law enforcement about these lies, she has issues with the show as well. I haven't filmed something like this before and it's not something that comes very naturally to put myself out here like this. But I wanted to say thank you to everyone who sent kind messages and

support after watching the Netflix show or learning about this story. I also wanted to say that I had nothing to do with the Netflix show and I don't entirely feel comfortable around some of the ethics of this type of storytelling and how the truth has been distorted in the show and I just really hope that the core important messages about this story isn't lost through the glamorization of this show. And just to remember that there's been really vulnerable people in real life that have been impacted by this. So I guess that kind of brings a bigger question into play here. And I'm curious to know what your thoughts are. Is it okay for a true crime drama to change a few details here and there, or exaggerate certain things to make it more

compelling of a story? Or is that just adding another layer of confusion and lies on top of a story that's already about lies and deception? Because then the viewer takes it at face value and thinks it's all true. I don't know. I also want to know what you think. What do you think Belle's true motive was in all of this? And she still hasn't paid any fines. Was her punishment enough? Probably not because she didn't even pay anything. She wasn't even punished. She was punished on a piece of paper,

but like there was no punishment because she hasn't paid her fines. So did she learn her lesson? I don't think so. She once again changed her identity and morphed into somebody else in Ethiopia. Like what's going on? What is going on? I don't know. think so. She once again changed her identity and morphed into somebody else in Ethiopia. Like, what's going on? What is going on? I don't know. I'm still diving into this because like,

I think it's only a matter of time before Belle speaks out. And you know what I would love? I'm just thinking of this now. I don't know how much people pay for interviews. I think I remember hearing that the 60 Minutes interview, they paid her like $70 thousand dollars or something like that for that train wreck of an interview. I bet you big networks have a lot of money at their disposal like maybe not this amount of money but how awesome would it be? And this is maybe a call to action so if you agree with me on this share this episode and tag these people. But what if like Good Morning America came out and said, you know what, Belle, we are going to pay you $410,000. All of the money that you owe in these fines to pay back these promises to do all this stuff. We're going to pay you that if you come on

and do an interview with us right now. Clear all this up. Let's talk and we'll pay that. Or even better, we'll pay you a hundred grand to do the interview, and we'll also pay all of your fines for you directly, so that you can be absolved and free of this whole headache. Just come do an interview. Now that I say that out loud, I get that it might be controversial because she shouldn't be paid for just speaking. She should have to like do the hard labor, the hard work,

to pay that money back and like feel it. So maybe that's actually a terrible idea now that I think about it and sit with it. But I don't know, at least then there would be like some sort of retribution. At least the people who are wronged would be made whole. But yeah, I get where that actually doesn't teach her a lesson. But I just really want her to do another interview. I want, I would love to talk to her directly. I doubt she would ever come on here. But, Belle, if you're listening, come chat. If you are back in LA, I'm a stone throw away. I'm an hour away. Come in, girl. I have a lot of questions. But I'm sure that we will hear from her soon on some sort of platform. Kind of like we ended up hearing from Anna Delvey again. I just feel like she's too much of a

narcissist to let all of these things come out about her and continue coming out about her and not try to like combat them. I could be wrong, but that's my opinion. So let me know what you guys think. All right. Thank you guys so much for tuning in to this episode, the whole deep dive on Belle Gibson. If you are a brand new listener and you've never listened to us before, take a moment, follow the podcast so that you don't miss anything. Every Thursday we also release an episode called Headline Highlights where we go through everything going on in the true crime world. So you can tune back in for that. And we also have bonus episodes if you need more content to binge.

But yeah, thank you guys so much for listening until the next one. Be nice, don't kill people, don't scam people, don't join any cults and just try to be a good person. All right. Thanks guys. Bye.