Infamous “Wellness Blogger” Who Faked Curing Her Brain Cancer Fined Over $400,000

You might have heard of Belle Gibson. You might have even subscribed to her blog a few years ago. The now infamous Australian “wellness blogger” gained popularity after launching her blog in 2013, releasing a hit app called The Whole Pantry, and publishing a bestselling book of the same title.

But Gibson’s heydays are well behind her. After faking having brain cancer, falsely claiming she had cured herself, and failing to donate to charity as she said she would, Gibson has just been fined AUS$410,000 (over US$320,000) for misleading her online followers.

Gibson was very famous on Instagram and Facebook where she talked about her health.

She claimed to have brain cancer and said she had cured herself using natural medicine and an alternative therapy. Gibson talked about the “gerson therapy,” which she falsely claimed could cure cancer and degenerative diseases through dietary changes alone.

But when Gibson released her book, people started seeing loopholes and inconsistencies in her story.

For example, in the preface of the book, Gibson said she had been “stable for two years now with no growth of cancer.” But she had posted on her Facebook page that her cancer had spread to her blood, spleen, and uterus. She also claimed to have heart surgery several times and dying twice on the operating table, but she didn’t appear to have any scars.

The public and the media started questioning Gibson’s claims, and this led to her coming clean.

Gibson confessed to Australia Woman’s Weekly that she never had cancer at all. She was quoted as saying:

“No. None of it’s true. I don’t want forgiveness. I just think [speaking out] was the responsible thing to do. Above anything, I would like people to say, ‘Okay, she’s human.'”

This revealed Gibson to be a fraud. And she received a lot of negative reactions, especially from cancer sufferers and their families to whom she gave false hopes.

Gibson has been recently fined by the Melbourne federal court for misleading her readers in another way

The blogger also claimed she was going to donate the proceeds from her app to charity, but no donation ever took place. The fines imposed total up to AUS$410,000, $150,000 of which Gibson has to pay for failing to make her promised donations to the family of a boy who had an inoperable brain tumor.

Gibson has been charged for five separate contraventions of the Australian Consumer Law Act, all relating to her broken promises to donate to charity. She is now being called a modern-day con artist for her elaborate false stories and deception.