Netflix’s latest drama series Apple Cider Vinegar is bound to captivate audiences. Not just because it has a stellar cast and is created by some of Australia’s finest television-making minds, but because it tells the true story of one of Australia’s worst fraudsters — Belle Gibson.
Right from the start, Apple Cider Vinegar makes it clear that it’s not a documentary. The self-aware drama series notes it is a “true-ish story based on a lie”. Plus, Belle wasn’t involved in its creation, nor did she receive any compensation.
“I have never met or spoken to Belle,” series creator Samantha Strauss told PEDESTRIAN.TV.
“She has not been in touch with the production. Our version of Belle is no doubt different to the real person. We’ve worked from the facts as we know them to create a character.”
Instead, the series was based on a book called The Woman Who Fooled the World by Beau Donelly and Nick Toscano — the two journalists who broke the story that Belle was faking her cancer diagnosis.
So, who ~is~ Belle Gibson? How were we fooled by her story and what ramifications did she face after her tower of lies came crumbling down?
Let’s get into it.
Who is Belle Gibson?
When it comes to Annabelle “Belle” Gibson, it’s hard to get the story straight. What we do know is that she was born in Launceston, Tasmania in 1991. She grew up in Brisbane and attended high school in Manly, Queensland until she dropped out of school in year 10.
By 2008, Belle had moved to Perth, Western Australia and Melbourne in 2009. In 2010, when she was 18, Belle became a mother.
Belle first rose to online prominence in May 2013 after she claimed that she had beaten terminal brain cancer by utilising natural treatments and a healthy, wholefood lifestyle. She managed to amass a following of more than 200,000 and she released an app called The Whole Pantry in 2014. This was followed by a physical cookbook of the same name.
The Whole Pantry app was a giant success. It was downloaded more than 200,000 times in its first month and was such a hit that it was chosen by Apple to be included with the launch of its groundbreaking new smartwatch a year later in 2015.
However, behind the followers, lucrative business deals and the vegan, gluten-free, refined-sugar-free recipes were a web of lies only growing more convoluted by the day. Not only were her medical claims flimsy at best, but rumours that she hadn’t paid charities she promised money to had started to swirl.
In July 2014, she claimed the cancer had spread to her blood, spleen, uterus and liver. In the same year, she also claimed that she had been stable with “no growth of cancer” for two years in the preface to her The Whole Pantry cookbook.
In 2015, an investigation by journalists Beau Donelly and Nick Toscano for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald revealed that Belle had solicited donations from her following on behalf of multiple charities for which she never gave money. Although they wanted to come out with an article about her faking her diagnosis, they couldn’t find solid evidence from people willing to publish it. Instead, they found another way to out her scam.
“We were hoping to write an initial article which would have said something like ‘There are doubts about Belle Gibson’s diagnosis’, but none of her friends who were speaking to us at that point would be prepared to speak on the record,” Toscano told The Morning Edition podcast.
“We put the suggestion and a draft to our lawyers and they quite judiciously said: ‘No, we can’t write the article yet’.
“So Beau and I then thought: ‘Well, if she’s lying about this, then what else is she lying about?’”
When did her lies fall apart?
As questions and mounting pressure from charities, stakeholders and personal relationships around her grew, she came clean about her fake diagnosis to the Australian Women’s Weekly in 2015.
“None of it is true,” she confessed to journalist Clair Weaver. Belle claimed she was misdiagnosed by a dodgy alternative medicine practitioner, and even she struggled with the truth.
“I am still jumping between what I think I know and what is reality,” she said. “I have lived it and I’m not really there yet.”
Not long after, Belle sat down for an interview with 60 Minutes journalist Tara Brown.
Wearing her now-famous pink turtleneck, she claimed that she had been wrongly diagnosed in 2009 by an alternative medicine practitioner. However, the programme also revealed that Belle had a brain scan in 2011 which proved she did not have cancer.
Instead of coming clean, she kept up the lie and landed in all of this mess.
What legal ramifications did she face as a result?
In 2017, Belle was ordered by the federal court to repay $410,000 after Consumer Affairs Victoria brought her to court after she sound thousands of copies of her cookbook and app off the back of false claims.
According to The Guardian, Belle was facing a maximum penalty of $1.1 million for contravening five consumer laws. However, with doubts that she’d actually pay the money back, the court Justice Debra Mortimer landed on a smaller fee and the opportunity to pay it back in instalments.
Despite the ruling, Belle refused to pay the fine or attend any court hearings. In 2019, Belle made a rare public appearance in court to have her financial records examined.
In 2021, Belle’s Melbourne home was raided by police after she had still not paid the fine, nor the further interest it had accrued.
“Ms Gibson owes the Victorian public a substantial debt and Consumer Affairs Victoria will continue to pursue repayment,” a CAV spokesperson said in a statement, per The Guardian.
As of 2021, Belle has not paid a cent.
So, where is Belle Gibson now?
Well, we’re not entirely sure where Belle is in 2025. However, in 2020, Belle had appeared to reinvent herself as an adopted member of the Ethiopian Oromo community in Melbourne.
In a video on social media, Belle was spotted wearing a brown headscarf and going by the name Sabontu.
“Today our diaspora community met to discuss the current situation of Ethiopia,” she told the interviewer in the almost 10-minute-long video.
“My heart is deeply embedded in the Oromo people, I feel blessed to be adopted by you.”
According to the ABC, members of the Melbourne Oromo community were not aware of her real identity.
While Belle did not have anything to do with Netflix’s drama Apple Cider Vinegar, insider sources have mixed ideas of what she thinks of the series.
“[Belle] has told me she will not be watching the series prior to it being screened,” one source told Yahoo! Lifestyle.
However, another source told the publication that she was “very keen” to tune in.
“Belle is very keen to see what they have done with the story,” said the other. Interesting, no?
You can watch all episodes of Apple Cider Vinegar on Netflix.
The post Who Is Belle Gibson? The Chilling True Story Behind Apple Cider Vinegar appeared first on PEDESTRIAN.TV .
