247: Exposing The Truth About Belle Gibson & Netflix’s ‘Apple Cider Vinegar’

Transcript

Speaker 4 Get ready for Malice, a twisted new drama starring Jack Whitehall, David DeCovny, and Carise Van Houten.

Speaker 9 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny, infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 16 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal.

Speaker 20 Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 21 Why is Adam after the Tanner family?

Speaker 23 What lengths will he go to?

Speaker 25 One thing's for sure, the past never stays buried, so keep your enemies close.

Speaker 28 Watch Malice, all episodes now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

Speaker 30 Hey, True Crime Besties, welcome back to an all-new episode of Serialously.

Speaker 30 Hey everybody, welcome back to an all-new episode of Serialously 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.

Speaker 30 I have been like reeling, wanting to talk about this case with you guys. I've been researching ad nauseum, so many details, and there's so much to talk about.

Speaker 30 Before we get into that, if you are a brand new listener and you have never checked out this podcast, you know, and this is your first time listening, let me give you a little breakdown of what it is we do here.

Speaker 30 My name is Annie.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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 documentaries do, or shows, to where it really feels digestible and like you're talking with a friend.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 31 Belle, Belle, Belle, please.

Speaker 32 I mean either you're interested in getting to the bottom of this and presenting the facts as they are, the facts or you're not.

Speaker 33 Yes, Belle was very convincing in her conviction of being sick and having an illness.

Speaker 34 Stay strong in your identity and your safu.

Speaker 34 Look to your community and make decisions like that which Gadda have taught us. Look to the Jasa to lead us forward.

Speaker 33 Just every answer she was giving me me was just confirming my gut instinct that she was lying.

Speaker 30 Now, if you've been on Netflix lately, you might have seen Apple Cider Vinegar already, which is the show about Belle.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 So, as we always talk about, there's a lot more to the story.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 I'm looking at their social medias because I want to know everything, everything below the line.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 I'm probably not well, but that's what I just like to know every single detail. So as I said, some of it was covered in apple cider vinegar.

Speaker 30 There also has been a new documentary that came out that was called The Search for Instagram's Worst Con Artist.

Speaker 30 That touched on it a little bit, but it mostly included the infamous 60 Minutes interview with her and kind of regurgitated certain details. It really didn't do a deep dive.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 And the biggest biggest question, who the hell is the real Belle Gibson? Will the real Belle Gibson please stand up? Belle wasn't just another influencer.

Speaker 30 She was the face of the early Instagram wellness movement.

Speaker 30 She was the poster child for clean eating, for alternative healing, and most shockingly, the idea that nutrition alone had cured her terminal cancer.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 So before Belle became the face of the wellness movement, before the cookbook deals, before the social media fame, fame, she was just Annabelle Natalie Gibson.

Speaker 30 She was born on October 8th, 1991, in Lawsiston, 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.

Speaker 30 And her early years largely are undocumented as well.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 I had to figure things out at just such a young age. Like, I'm the one who carried that weight on my shoulders.

Speaker 30 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 grown-ups, to real adults.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 Now, I don't know how she did this at just five years old, long before her peers even learned how to, you know, ride a bike without training wheels or even tie their shoes, but she claimed that she did it.

Speaker 30 And she says that because of it, she was overwhelmed. So Belle left her family home at the age of 12 years old.

Speaker 30 She moved around a lot, crashing on friends' couches, staying with neighbors, never truly having a stable place to call home.

Speaker 30 Now, after a brief stint in a local high school, she ended up dropping out at around the ninth grade.

Speaker 30 She 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.

Speaker 30 Then in late 2008, when she was 17 years old, she decided to make a pretty bold move.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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 her childhood to lure people in.

Speaker 30 And in her free time, Belle became heavily involved in the local skateboarding community.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 She even became an active member of the website skateboard.com, where she carefully just curated and crafted this whole new rebellious identity.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 She dyed her hair black, she got piercing, 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.

Speaker 30 Now, on this skateboarding form, Belle found a space where she felt like she could finally be whoever she wanted to be.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 But between jokes, she would also start sharing a little bit more about her vulnerability, about personal things regarding herself.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 And it was almost like that form 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.

Speaker 30 She basically learned how to capture the attention and make people care about her. So this form was almost like an early version of social media for her.

Speaker 30 And as she spent more time on the site, her posts grew increasingly personal.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 Then by May 2009, her posts took a pretty drastic turn.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 Because Belle started posting about some pretty alarming health issues, claiming she had suffered a stroke.

Speaker 30 She was now dealing with severe heart problems and problems that required her to have multiple surgeries. And Belle's posts did not go unnoticed.

Speaker 30 I mean, the more that she shared about her health struggles, the more people on this form started paying attention to her.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 She claimed that she had to be rushed into emergency surgery. Her post was brief, but it was pretty dramatic, and this caused a a flood of responses from all these worried members and friends of hers.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 She now told people on this forum that she was heading back to the hospital, this time for her third heart surgery.

Speaker 30 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?

Speaker 30 How was she affording multiple surgeries in such a short time? But many people didn't really question it.

Speaker 30 They kind of set their doubts aside, they responded with words of encouragement, with words of concern, support, and they wanted to be there for Belle.

Speaker 30 A day later, on May 21st, Belle returned to the form with an update. According to her, the surgery had not gone as expected.

Speaker 30 She claimed that she temporarily died on the operating table all before doctors miraculously revived her.

Speaker 30 Her post 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 Eventually, she told this form, her new online group of peers and friends, she told them her condition was worsening.

Speaker 30 Now she was saying that she had a tumor on her heart and it was time to prepare for the inevitable. She was terminal.

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Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 It was the only option she really had at that point. So, to prepare for it, she started cutting her hair.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 And her posts became more frequent and more dramatic, just detailing every single setback and this new diagnosis.

Speaker 30 Yet, despite this supposed rapid decline, Belle made another life change in July of 2009. Once again, she packed up and she relocated.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 It was another fresh start for Belle and another chance to, quite honestly, reinvent herself.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 And there, Belle also settled into a new life. She socialized, she built new relationships, and she embraced this next chapter of her life.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 Because yes, despite all the dire health struggles, everything that Belle talked about online, she experienced a very smooth and complication-free pregnancy.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 The two of them were always arguing back and forth.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 By this point, she had transitioned from posting on that skateboarding form to now posting on Facebook and giving all of her updates there.

Speaker 30 She also claimed that she had been diagnosed with a stage two malignant brain tumor.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 But Belle was not going to give up, and she really presented herself as a fighter, determined to defy the odds.

Speaker 30 At first, she said that she was following conventional medical advice, undergoing chemotherapy all in an effort to prolong her life.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 If she only had a few weeks left to live, she wasn't going to live them like this. So, against her doctor's recommendations, she decided to reject modern medicine.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 Now, Gerson therapy was developed in the 1920s by a German physician named Max Gerson.

Speaker 30 It promoted the idea that chronic illnesses and chronic diseases, including cancer, could all be reversed by flooding the body with nutrients.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 And again, those are just as it sounds, so look it up at your own risk.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 So, Belle said online that this alternative regimen was working wonders, that her cancer was rapidly disappearing.

Speaker 30 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 doing an alternative path to recovery, it was not only possible, but it also worked.

Speaker 30 But there was something strange about how Belle handled her illness.

Speaker 30 While she poured her heart out online, detailing every supposed struggle, she rarely, if ever, spoke about it with her close friends and family.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 She even launched a blog and a public Facebook page, sharing every intimate and painful detail of her her battle with cancer.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 Here was this young, beautiful single mother fighting back against terminal brain cancer with nothing but just her sheer will and willpower and natural remedies, juicing, eating healthy.

Speaker 30 It was unbelievable. She wasn't just surviving either.
She was thriving in all of this.

Speaker 30 I mean, it's no wonder that her story resonated so deeply with her audience, which at this point was just snowballing and growing.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 Instead, I'm going to work what's already working and I'm going to pivot everything and focus solely on social media. By 2012, she created an Instagram account under the handle Healing Bell.

Speaker 30 And on this Instagram account, she curated this space to really document every step about her health journey.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 During this time, Belle also entered into a relationship with Clive Rothwell. He is an older man and also an IT professional.

Speaker 30 And while the details about their relationship are a little fuzzy, a little unclear, Clive played a significant role in her life.

Speaker 30 Not only did he help care for her son Oliver, but some believe that he also might have assisted in building her online presence.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 So it seemed like she had to be getting help from somewhere. And this older IT professional man, I mean,

Speaker 30 the math maths, right? It feels like it fits. So as her platform expanded, so did the extreme nature of her claims.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 So she didn't just talk about her diet anymore. She also started weaving in a very complex narrative about her health.

Speaker 30 She claimed it to have seizures, brain swelling, difficulty walking, that she suffered from vision and memory problems.

Speaker 30 And at one point, she even claimed that she had a ringworm, but that she decided to drink apple cider vinegar to help cure it.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 And this just drew in more and more people, people who truly distrusted mainstream medicine.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 So, Belle had positioned herself as this polarizing yet very compelling figure. She wasn't just some influencer peddling wellness tips.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 So, as her online presence exploded, Belle realized she now had the opportunity to do more than just blog about her experiences.

Speaker 30 She wanted to turn her platform into something tangible, tangible, something that would truly solidify her influence in the health and wellness space.

Speaker 30 So by 2013, she came up with the idea for the whole pantry.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 It wasn't just about documenting her journey anymore. It was about sharing the tools that had supposedly really saved her life.

Speaker 36 Bill Gibson is part of a new breed of entrepreneurs. She is an ecopreneur.

Speaker 37 You taste like mango.

Speaker 36 Belle launched the Whole Pantry app last year.

Speaker 37 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.

Speaker 36 The Whole Pantry was born through Belle's own battle with brain cancer. She was diagnosed with terminal cancer a few years ago.

Speaker 36 After trying the traditional treatment methods, she turned to Whole Foods to heal herself instead, and she soon began to develop an app.

Speaker 30 The Whole Pantry was designed as a sleek, minimalist app that offered plant-based recipes.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 If only they followed her lead. So in August 2013, Belle launched the Whole Pantry app.
And it was successful almost immediately.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 But the contrast between Belle and the content that she posted was also striking to certain people.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 She didn't just offer support, she also was giving direct health advice.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 Overnight, Belle's life was completely transformed.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 But this financial success of it all, it wasn't her only goal. She was determined to help others.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 She, there were a lot of different causes. But one story stuck a particularly personal cord.

Speaker 30 Shortly after launching her app, Belle met a couple whose young son, just seven years old, Joshua Schwartz, he had been diagnosed with a rare, untreatable brain cancer at the age of five years old.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 She wanted to be a support system for them. She wanted to help Joshua.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 And in a heartfelt caption, she wrote, Josh has a similar, malignant, inoperable brain tumor to the one that I have.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 So, this combination of entrepreneurial success and passionate philanthropy not only solidified Belle'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.

Speaker 30 She claimed to have given over $300,000 to charity, and her narrative inspired so many supporters to help as well.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 It was actually meant to be a full roadmap for natural healing and also serve as a memoir of her personal transformation.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 And the preface of Belle's book was all about her upbringing.

Speaker 30 She recalled how she had a difficult childhood that was marked by early responsibility, being thrown into adulthood early on, this tale of survival.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 I moved out of the home when I was 12 years young, changing my life forever. It was a year of many firsts.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 I was empowering myself to save my own life through nutrition, patience, determination, and love.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 Cosmo Magazine awarded her the Fun, Fearless Female Social Media Award, and L Magazine also published a feature about Belle titled The Most Inspiring Woman You've Met This Year.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 And with all of this success, she found herself living a life and a lifestyle, I could say, that people only dreamed of.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 People who were starting to question the authenticity of some of Belle's claims.

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Speaker 30 Critics started questioning the validity of Belle's health story.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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?

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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?

Speaker 30 I mean, if her methods worked so well, why was she getting worse? Why was it spreading?

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 They abandoned modern medicine and just started following her recommendations.

Speaker 30 One woman, Kylie Willie, 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.

Speaker 30 Because once she started following Belle's advice, Kylie didn't get better. She got much, much worse.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 But she wondered what may have happened if she continued to follow Belle's advice.

Speaker 47 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.

Speaker 48 I don't know. I felt betrayed and a little bit let down by her.

Speaker 47 And then the absolute mind-blowing, why the hell would you do that? Why would you pretend to have cancer?

Speaker 49 Like,

Speaker 50 what the hell?

Speaker 48 I felt like it made me look like an idiot.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 There were so many questions. I mean, why wasn't she more terrified upon learning that she was pregnant, given her supposed terminal diagnosis?

Speaker 30 And why did she describe her brain tumor as stage two, when brain cancers are typically classified by grades rather than stages?

Speaker 30 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 Belle's loyal followers.

Speaker 30 While some of her supporters remained, yes, like fiercely loyal, other people also started noticing a pattern of inconsistency.

Speaker 30 And that started calling into question the claims that she had built this entire business, this entire career and empire on.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 If you're just like walking into an injector, it makes no sense.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 Chanel and Belle had met back in 2012 or 2013 when Chanel, then a journalist intern, was assigned to interview Belle.

Speaker 30 Their initial connection grew very quickly and soon they became very close friends. However, over time, small red flags began to accumulate.

Speaker 30 For instance, Belle once asked Chanel to cook meals for the Schwartz family.

Speaker 30 Remember Joshua, the little boy who had cancer, the family that she claimed to be supporting because their young son was battling brain cancer?

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 And her suspicions only got worse because things weren't aligning with somebody who was fighting a terminal illness.

Speaker 30 Belle was often seen drinking, doing drugs, eating junk food, even spending a lot of time in tanning beds, which is a lifestyle that is completely different, not only from someone who is a cancer patient and what you would expect them to be doing, but so different from the lifestyle that she was portraying on social media, the public persona she was putting out there.

Speaker 33 Things just started to not add up for me. There were a few things that happened,

Speaker 33 you know, like excessive drinking of alcohol, going to a solarium and tanning. Like obviously skin cancer is a really big issue here in Australia.

Speaker 33 So those things didn't really make sense to me. I

Speaker 33 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

Speaker 33 get to the point where they're very frail and bedridden. And Belle was never

Speaker 33 presented that kind of those kind of symptoms. She was always very active, very well, kind of thriving, running a business empire.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 I'm supposed to be healing naturally. Don't call anybody.
I'm fine. I'm fine.

Speaker 30 But it was almost like that jolt of where Belle kind of snapped out of this seizure or whatever you would call call it, only happened when Chanel was going to call an ambulance.

Speaker 30 So she was completely disturbed by this and 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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 Belle's stories were true.

Speaker 30 So that very night, the group of friends decided they were going to confront Belle at her apartment. Chanel very quickly, just bluntly said, hey, are you sick? Tell me, yes or no, are you sick?

Speaker 30 But Belle's reply was extremely vague and very defensive. She just simply replied saying, Of course I am.

Speaker 33 I arrived at her house one night, basically kind of unannounced with another friend.

Speaker 33 I was kind of very straightforward with her, said, Are you sick?

Speaker 33 I basically demanded to see evidence of her cancer. I asked her to go get any

Speaker 33 scans,

Speaker 33 doctor's reports, surgeons' 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.

Speaker 33 So, as the conversation progressed,

Speaker 33 and what is now dubbed the intervention from that night,

Speaker 33 just every answer she was giving me was just confirming my gut instinct that she was lying.

Speaker 33 She had just announced that her cancer had spread. It was stage four.

Speaker 33 And I asked her where she got that diagnosis at what hospital. She said she didn't go to a hospital.
She went to some random doctor's house.

Speaker 33 And I asked who that doctor was, and she said, Dr.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 So Chanel, feeling like Belle's lies could mislead others, she decided she was going to take further action.

Speaker 30 She reached out to lawyers, law enforcement, and even investigative journalists, all of which initially said they couldn't help her.

Speaker 30 But word of Chanel's concerns eventually reached two reporters from a publication called The Age.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 However, it was really hard to prove that Belle was lying about her medical stuff and having cancer because they wouldn't have immediate access to her medical files.

Speaker 30 But then the light bulb kind of went off to where they're like, okay, well, if she's lying about her medical diagnosis, what else could she be lying about?

Speaker 30 So one of the first lies that they uncovered was her age.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 So it seemed like she deliberately made herself older to sound more credible.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 She also told people she was a test tube baby, anything to give her, you know, a little edge, a little bit of tension.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 But the biggest issue turned out to be her claims about the charity. Remember, Belle often bragged about donating huge chunks of her profits.

Speaker 30 She even said that she had given away $300,000 to nearly 20 20 different causes, causes like maternal health care, human rights, community projects, even direct support for families who were in crisis.

Speaker 30 But when these reporters dug deeper, they found almost no evidence that any of this money had ever gone to the intended charities.

Speaker 30 And many of the organizations that Belle had mentioned weren't even aware that they were being used to boost her image.

Speaker 30 And records only show donations totaling around $7,000 over the course of several years, nowhere near the amount that she had claimed.

Speaker 30 And one case that really stood out, of course, was the Schwartz family, little Joshua. Belle had written about their son in her cookbook.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 She even had organized fundraising for this family.

Speaker 30 But when the journalists reached out to them, They said they had never even received a dime from Belle, that they didn't even know that she was raising money for them.

Speaker 30 And Joshua's mom also said, you know, Belle 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 It highlighted Belle'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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 After the article, even the institutions that had once backed Belle began to rethink their support.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 And around that same time, L Magazine, that magazine that published the in-depth story about Belle, they disclosed that shortly after their article went live, they received an anonymous email.

Speaker 30 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 Belle Gibson, creator of the whole pantry app and book.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 She was born in 1991, class of 08, at Wynham High School in Queensland. My younger brother was in her class.
Secondly, she never had, nor does she, currently have any form of cancer.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 She is a wolf in sheep's clothing and a master manipulator. Sincerely, sick of seeing her lies published.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 So, facing mounting backlash and growing scrutiny, Belle began to backpedal, started to change her story. Sort of.

Speaker 4 Get ready for Malice, a twisted new drama starring Jack Whitehall, David DeCovney, and Carice Van Houten.

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Speaker 12 to destroy them.

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Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 However, the invitation for the event told a very different story. It clearly listed three charities on it.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 There was also another campaign in May of 2014 claiming that the proceeds from app sales would be donated to two charities.

Speaker 30 But, shocker, as it turns out, neither charity ever received a single cent from Belle's company. Yet still, she tried to argue that these events, they were not fundraising events at all.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 That's a direct quote. But even now, this aggressive stance, it wasn't going to combat the mounting evidence against her, right?

Speaker 30 So in a desperate attempt to cover her tracks, Belle began erasing her digital footprint entirely.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 Her whole Pantry Facebook page and Twitter account also vanished, and thousands of photos disappeared from her personal personal and professional Instagram profiles.

Speaker 30 This frantic cleanup, 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 Then there was also an account that was under the name Harry Gibson, and it was aggressively attacking anybody who dared to question Belle's claims.

Speaker 30 Investigator reporters very quickly determined that this Harry Gibson was none other than Belle 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?

Speaker 30 Like maybe that's a way to start. I don't know.
So as more journalists began exposing her story, Belle's desperation became evident.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 But under this mounting pressure, Belle eventually had to address the controversy over all of her charitable contributions.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 It wasn't at all because she she was planning on keeping this money for herself.

Speaker 30 She blamed disappointing sales and miscalculated profits for the setbacks, insisting that the money was still earmarked for donation.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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?

Speaker 30 But there was still public outrage. People were pissed, and things continued to unravel for Belle.

Speaker 30 A few months after that first article, she finally agreed to do an interview with Australian Woman's Weekly.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 Because in that interview, Belle admitted that the stories that she had spun about her cancer were all fake.

Speaker 30 Well, not all of them, but at least the recent claims of her being diagnosed with a third and fourth cancer and its spreading.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 She said, quote, none of it's true. I don't want forgiveness.
I just think speaking out was the responsible thing to do.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 Now, the most surprising thing about this interview was that Belle showed absolutely zero remorse for lying.

Speaker 30 Instead, she attributed her lies and her fabrications all back to her troubled childhood, to her rough upbringing.

Speaker 30 She really blamed her estranged mother for leaving her and for making her fend for herself starting at the age of five.

Speaker 30 Yet, this explanation, which I believe was carefully curated to evoke sympathy, it fell flat for a lot of people, and it felt like a really bad justification for such a horrible lie.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 In this interview, she looked clean, refreshed.

Speaker 30 She had this huge hot pink lip gloss and hot pink turtleneck sweater on, which I honestly, I'm going to tell you, I thought about wearing a hot pink turtleneck for this episode.

Speaker 30 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 freaking try-hard.

Speaker 30 But anyway, it seemed like she was doing this to

Speaker 30 portray herself as super polished and also to like distract people a little bit, if that makes sense. I don't know.

Speaker 30 But in this interview, she tried to make every excuse possible to defend why she lied about everything.

Speaker 30 Everything from her early claims of those heart issues to then those later claims of brain cancer.

Speaker 32 Were you in hospital at the time that you were posting these?

Speaker 51 No.

Speaker 32 I mean, you go into extraordinary details. I had surgery about seven hours ago.

Speaker 32 The doctor comes in and tells me the draining failed and I went into cardiac arrest and died for just under three minutes.

Speaker 32 I had the most intense bruising from the paddles when they electrocuted me back to consciousness.

Speaker 32 Minus the wires and constant throwing up of blood.

Speaker 32 Anyway, the procedure failed and I died.

Speaker 52 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.

Speaker 51 I don't have.

Speaker 32 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.

Speaker 32 That's not melodramatic, that's straight out lying. It is extraordinary lies.

Speaker 32 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?

Speaker 52 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 apologise.

Speaker 52 And I'm here to do that.

Speaker 52 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.

Speaker 52 I didn't know if it was the same. I thought that it was important to go and seek a scan and...

Speaker 53 be confident in where I stood.

Speaker 32 I don't mean to be crass about it, but it was also the fact that despite being given a four-month deadline, you were still alive.

Speaker 31 Yeah. Was that

Speaker 32 an indicator to you that you didn't have brain cancer?

Speaker 51 It wasn't an indicator.

Speaker 52 I went to the Alfred hospital and I contacted Mark and I had 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

Speaker 52 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.

Speaker 50 Right.

Speaker 32 So what did the brain scan show?

Speaker 51 He brought in scans

Speaker 51 and it showed a brain tumour

Speaker 51 but that wasn't my scan because most recently I went back to the Alfred and I got my full portfolio from them

Speaker 52 and I did get that brain scan but there is no brain tumour there.

Speaker 32 Okay so what date was that Belle and when did you go to the Alfred?

Speaker 52 I will be able to give you this information.

Speaker 32 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.

Speaker 32 You haven't given us any MRIs. You haven't given us any tissue tests.
You haven't given us anything.

Speaker 52 I wasn't explicitly asked for any of that, but I haven't.

Speaker 31 Well, really?

Speaker 51 Of course I do.

Speaker 52 The producers I've been working with are aware of my health position.

Speaker 51 I wasn't.

Speaker 31 Belle, Belle, Belle, Belle, please.

Speaker 32 I mean, either you're interested in getting to the bottom of this and presenting the facts as they are, the facts, or you're not.

Speaker 30 Now, instead of providing clarification, this interview, it just caused more confusion.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 And according to this new story, she truly did believe that she was dying, and she underwent this Germans, quote, magnetic therapy, mistakenly thinking that it was a form of radiation treatment that was meant to cure her cancer.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 I have been openly speaking about what was my reality. Which I'm gonna say that again because it is very smart and very carefully worded.
I've not been intentionally untruthful.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 I thought that I did, so I can't be held responsible for this, to where the accountability doesn't quite fall on her.

Speaker 30 From an outsider's point of view, it certainly does, but just very careful with the words that she's using.

Speaker 30 Belle 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 She was seeking treatment from conventional medical professionals. She was struggling to define her own symptoms.
She was just trying to figure it out.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 32 Did you live in fear of being found out?

Speaker 31 No.

Speaker 52 Because I wasn't living in a space where I didn't know that this wasn't my reality.

Speaker 32 Would you accept that you're a pathological liar?

Speaker 51 No.

Speaker 32 Do you take responsibility for driving any people away from conventional medicine in seeking treatment for their cancer?

Speaker 51 That would be really heartbreaking to me because I never intended on doing that.

Speaker 32 Do you accept that that's what you might have done?

Speaker 51 I accept that might have happened.

Speaker 32 Well, actually, how old are you?

Speaker 53 I've always been raised

Speaker 52 as being currently a 26-year-old.

Speaker 31 How old are you?

Speaker 52 Well, I live knowing, as I've always known, that I would be 26.

Speaker 31 Okay, Belle.

Speaker 32 This is a really, really simple question. How old are you?

Speaker 52 I believe that I'm 26.

Speaker 51 I have

Speaker 51 two birth certificates and I've had my name changed four times.

Speaker 52 The identity crisis there is big, but that was my normal when I was growing up, Tara, that...

Speaker 32 What do you know the truth to be now?

Speaker 52 That's probably a question that we'll have to keep digging for.

Speaker 52 Because it's not something I've ever understood or had answers around.

Speaker 32 So when you needed to file some financial documents,

Speaker 32 how did you choose the birth date you gave?

Speaker 51 If you don't know.

Speaker 52 With my most recent Deed Poll paper, which has

Speaker 52 the younger of the age and the most recent of the name.

Speaker 32 Right. So

Speaker 32 currently, then, according to those documents, you're 23.

Speaker 51 Correct. Tara.

Speaker 51 I'm trying to draw on information.

Speaker 32 No, no, don't draw on information. Just be honest.

Speaker 53 I am being honest with you.

Speaker 32 I'm trying to be open to what you're saying, but

Speaker 32 you are just muddying the waters. Give me the every answer.

Speaker 30 I mean, word salad, but also so roundabout and looney-tuned, it's just bizarre to me. So, as the controversy deepened, the fallout happened pretty quickly.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 And in the midst of all this unraveling, even more voices started emerging, shedding light on the many, many layers of Belle's deception.

Speaker 30 And one of the most striking revelations came from her own family. Belle's own stepfather stepped forward to tell a very different story.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 Which I have to say, that is really crazy.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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, what a lot of rubbish.

Speaker 30 Belle never cared for me. Her brother is not autistic, and she's barely done a minute's housework in her entire life.

Speaker 30 I've practically worked myself into an early grave to give that girl everything that she wanted in life.

Speaker 30 And adding to this mounting evidence against Belle and all of her claims, her brother Nick also broke his silence in an interview.

Speaker 30 He confirmed he was not autistic, and he also expressed genuine confusion over why Belle would have described him that way.

Speaker 30 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 behavior.

Speaker 54 I don't like that hate word, but sometimes I feel like turning around to her and saying, Belle, I hate you.

Speaker 49 What has your sister done to your life?

Speaker 54 She's stuffed it up real bad.

Speaker 54 I've had to go through cancelling myself.

Speaker 54 I don't like to be in public. I've had people come up to me and

Speaker 54 ask me questions and they think I'm like her when I'm nothing like her.

Speaker 54 But I really hope she does watch this

Speaker 54 and see how much I am hurting.

Speaker 30 You are, aren't you?

Speaker 44 You're broken.

Speaker 54 I am.

Speaker 54 You know, my kids see me hurting as well. I don't have autism at all, no.

Speaker 54 Even when I was a kid, she used to call me retard.

Speaker 23 What did that make you think about yourself growing up?

Speaker 54 I hate myself, and

Speaker 54 I didn't want to be around. I was

Speaker 54 shy, placid,

Speaker 50 and

Speaker 54 I didn't like to be out in the public just because things she said.

Speaker 49 And she's come out and said that you're virtually non-verbal.

Speaker 54 It's correct.

Speaker 54 Like, I talk to a lot of people.

Speaker 54 I do have trouble with reading and 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

Speaker 54 embarrassing.

Speaker 30 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?

Speaker 30 And by May of 2016, Consumer Affairs announced that they were seeking legal action against Belle.

Speaker 30 This legal action was for making false claims about a terminal brain cancer diagnosis and for, of course, fabricating charity donations.

Speaker 30 So as legal action ramped up, the case against Belle eventually reached the federal courts. And the courts gave her a fine that totaled to $410,000.
The $410,000 divides differently.

Speaker 30 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 app's launch.
Another was from a fundraising event.

Speaker 30 But in total, everything came up to $410,000. Meanwhile, Penguin Books, who had published her cookbook without, you know, verifying her claims, was also forced to pay a fine of $30,000.

Speaker 30 Now, they paid this fine almost immediately because they just wanted to completely distance themselves from Belle, which I don't blame them for that.

Speaker 30 And by March of 2017, the Federal Court of Australia delivered its final ruling.

Speaker 30 There was no evidence that Belle ever had cancer, and her claims about curing it with natural remedies, they were entirely false.

Speaker 30 Yet, the judge noted that Belle 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.

Speaker 30 Her pitch overwhelmingly used groups likely to evoke sympathy because of their vulnerabilities, young girls, asylum seekers, and young children.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 She was nearly $170,000 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.

Speaker 30 They can park it in different places and you can look like you have no money.

Speaker 30 But what made this situation even more confusing was that by this point, Belle had also relocated to the United States because she wanted to get away from all the criticism that was back home in Australia.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 56 It's been almost two years since she was found guilty of misleading and deceptive conduct and ordered to pay $410,000.

Speaker 56 Until now, Belle Gibson has thumbed her nose at authorities and ignored that fine. Today Gibson stepped into the witness box.

Speaker 56 When asked about Clive Rothwell, the man she's been living with since 2015, she said, he's just a friend.

Speaker 56 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, Belle said, I'm not sure.

Speaker 56 When asked if she knows his income, she said, it's not my business.

Speaker 9 It's very odd that you're saying that Clive's just a friend.

Speaker 49 I think everyone's got a few questions about that.

Speaker 56 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.

Speaker 55 Belle Gibson told the court that she lives on CentLink benefits and receives child support payments for her son.

Speaker 56 Just three months ago, A Current Affair caught the Queen of Con returning from a luxury overseas holiday.

Speaker 25 Don't you think it's more important to be paying back that fine rather than going on an overseas trip?

Speaker 56 Gibson enjoyed a month in Kenya and Ethiopia with her eight-year-old son.

Speaker 49 Bal, you've scammed the people of Australia.

Speaker 55 Don't you have anything to say?

Speaker 56 Lawyer Justin Lawrence.

Speaker 57 I think there's no doubt that Consumer Affairs have watched the story.

Speaker 57 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.

Speaker 57 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 travelling over the other side of the world, potentially spending tens of thousands of dollars on expensive holidays.

Speaker 56 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.

Speaker 56 When asked how Clive paid for it, Gibson said, I don't know. Another hot topic was Gibson's choice of wardrobe.

Speaker 30 So in 2020, with no resolution in sight, the Sheriff's Office in Australia decided to take action.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 But even with this raid by the Sheriff's Office, Belle's financial situation remained unresolved.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 And that to me just shows she has no remorse for what she's done, not even trying to be remorseful.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 34 Presently, when you speak to those back home, people are being arrested, people are being shot in the street because of their oromo identity.

Speaker 34 You know, like the madness that is happening in the last week

Speaker 34 came as a complete shock to everybody.

Speaker 34 Abiy has a chance to change this. He has a chance to liberate the entire nation of Ethiopia.

Speaker 34 Not just

Speaker 30 one

Speaker 34 subsection

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 34 Everyone is looking, and only after a few days of accepting this, we've got almost a civil war breaking out.

Speaker 34 People are looking. He has a chance to change this, but we are losing faith that that's his intention.

Speaker 46 All right, thanks, Subuntu.

Speaker 46 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 then they want to support people who's been injured and then who's been arrested, or like someone who's going through a hard time at the moment in Oromia.

Speaker 46 So, like, do you have any advice for Oromo people that are around the world?

Speaker 34 My advice is in line with our hero Joa.

Speaker 34 You know, let's look to the Jasa, just like the Gada system teaches us, like our forefathers have taught us, like our leaders are telling us now.

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 34 Sleep with one eye open.

Speaker 30 She insisted on being called Sabon 2, and she appeared in these videos attending community events, weddings, meetings, and just casual neighborhood barbecues.

Speaker 30 It was almost like she was now, once again, embracing an entirely new identity.

Speaker 30 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 abusing people.

Speaker 30 So the community, already kind of confused about where Belle came from, they grew increasingly suspicious.

Speaker 30 Initially, the group's leader had assumed that Belle might simply be a girlfriend or a relative of one of the members.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 So these questions, combined with the warnings from outsiders, convinced this Ethiopian community that something just was not right here with Belle.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 Soon after that, her relationship with Clive also started to unravel, though the full details, they remain a little bit unknown.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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?

Speaker 30 What did she do this for? Why did she lie? I personally think it was for attention.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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...

Speaker 30 Also kind of desperado and like certainly not a good enough excuse to do what she had done.

Speaker 30 Now, some people believe that her entire act was was an attempt to emulate another Australian wellness creator named Jess.

Speaker 30 Jess had already made a name for herself by documenting her own battle with cancer and also by, you know, speaking out in support of alternative therapies like Gerson therapy and coffee enemas and all of that.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 49 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.

Speaker 49 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.

Speaker 49 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.

Speaker 49 Everything that was a staple of my diet for the first 22 years was gone and replaced by plants and juice.

Speaker 49 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.

Speaker 49 And then there was my favourite part of the whole therapy, which was the coffee enemas.

Speaker 49 And putting...

Speaker 49 five buckets of coffee up my bottom every single day.

Speaker 49 It seriously is the best part.

Speaker 49 You get 30 minutes alone to yourself in the bathroom five times a day.

Speaker 46 It's great.

Speaker 49 And I did all of this religiously for two whole years, dedicated every waking hour to saving my own life.

Speaker 49 And I did this because very early on in my journey I called up one of the counselors at the Gawler Foundation and I was really probing her about Ian's story and how he did it.

Speaker 49 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.

Speaker 49 Every single thing, every act that you take, it needs to be in the act of healing your body. Be radically kind to yourselves.

Speaker 49 Be brave enough to follow your intuition even when it's really, really scary.

Speaker 49 And always, always, always be really well.

Speaker 49 Thank you so much for hearing me speak. And thank you so much to Ian.

Speaker 50 Thank you.

Speaker 30 Eventually, Jess's mom passed away in 2013, and after her mom died, Jess began to realize that her holistic treatments just were not working.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 So Jess herself passed away in 2015, around seven years after she was initially diagnosed with cancer.

Speaker 30 So there are reports that Belle even showed up to Jess's funeral, even though she was never invited.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 She was wailing, she was crying, so loudly, so much that people couldn't even concentrate on the service that was happening.

Speaker 30 A lot of people think that all of her outrageous lies are basically, like I said, just a cry for attention.

Speaker 30 Friends have always said that she was an attention seeker, even from a very 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.

Speaker 30 Some even suggested that she might suffer from having munchhausens, which basically is when somebody deliberately exaggerates or makes up symptoms to get sympathy or makes themselves sick.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 And like I said, that Netflix show, Apple Cider Vinegar, it doesn't always clear things up.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 There are lists online of all the differences between the show and what actually happened, which you can look up.

Speaker 30 But one example is that in Apple Cider Vinegar, there is a character who is loosely depicted and based on Jess, the actual actual young woman who died from cancer.

Speaker 30 And her family is not happy with how in the Netflix dramatization,

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 33 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.

Speaker 33 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.

Speaker 33 And I just really hope that the core important messages about this story isn't lost through the glamorization of this show.

Speaker 33 And just to remember that there's been really vulnerable people in real life that have been impacted by this.

Speaker 30 So I guess that kind of brings a bigger question into play here. And I'm curious to know what your thoughts are.

Speaker 30 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?

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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?

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 I don't know how much people pay for interviews. I think I remember hearing that the 60-minutes interview, they paid her like $70,000 or something like that for that train wreck of an interview.

Speaker 30 I bet you big networks have a lot of money at at their disposal. Like maybe not this amount of money, but how awesome would it be? And this is maybe a call to action.

Speaker 30 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?

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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 100 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 Come in, girl. I have a lot of questions.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 Every Thursday, we also release an episode called Headline Highlights, where we go through everything going on in the true crime world. So you you can tune back in for that.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 Don't join any cults. And just try to be a good person.
All right. Thanks, guys.
Bye.

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247: Exposing The Truth About Belle Gibson & Netflix’s ‘Apple Cider Vinegar’

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