Is “Apple Cider Vinegar” a True Story? Inside Belle Gibson’s Real-Life Cancer-Curing Scam That Rocked the Wellness Industry

Ten years after her fall from grace, former Australian wellness influencer Belle Gibson is in the spotlight once again — thanks to Netflix’s Apple Cider Vinegar.

The six-part limited series, which premiered Feb. 6, is a “true-ish story based on a lie,” according to Netflix, and tells the story of Gibson, who rose to fame during the early days of Instagram. The former influencer, who is played by Kaitlyn Dever, claimed to have cured her terminal brain cancer through a holistic lifestyle and clean diet. Gibson promoted her wellness advice through her hugely popular Instagram account, @healing_belle, her successful app, The Whole Pantry, and her cookbook by the same title.

But in 2015, Gibson’s wellness empire came crashing down when two Australian journalists, Beau Donelly and Nick Toscano, exposed her for lying about donating profits from her businesses to several charities. Shortly after, it was revealed that Gibson had also lied about her age and about having cancer entirely.

Gibson was eventually found guilty of engaging in misleading and deceptive conduct in 2017, tied to lying about her charitable donations. She was fined over $400,000 and as of 2021, still owed much of it to the Victorian government.

Donelly and Toscano wrote about the Gibson scandal for the Australian newspaper The Age and in the 2017 book The Woman Who Fooled the World. Their reporting inspired Australian writer Samantha Strauss, who is also behind Hulu’s adaptation of Nine Perfect Strangers, to bring Gibson’s story to the small screen.

Here’s a closer look at the true story behind Apple Cider Vinegar and the lies Belle Gibson told to support her wellness endeavors.

Who is Belle Gibson?

According to Gibson’s retelling, she grew up in a troubled home in Brisbane, Australia — with a mother who struggled with multiple sclerosis and chronic fatigue, a brother who was allegedly on the autism spectrum and a father who was never in the picture.

“When I started school, my mum went, ‘My daughter is grown up now,’ ” Gibson claimed to Australia’s Women’s Weekly in 2015. “All of a sudden, I was walking to school on my own, making school lunches and cleaning the house every day. It was my responsibility to do grocery shopping, do the washing, arrange medical appointments and pick up my brother. I didn’t have toys.”

However, several of Gibson’s family members — including her late mother, Natalie Dal-Bello (who died from multiple sclerosis in 2017), her step-father, Andrew Dal-Bello, and her brother, Nick Gibson — have all refuted these claims. Natalie referred to her daughter’s statements as “a lot of rubbish.”

“Belle never cared for me, her brother is not autistic and she’s barely done a minute’s housework in her life,” Natalie said in 2015, per the Herald Sun.

Gibson left home at a “very young age,” her stepfather said in the 2024 documentary Instagram’s Worst Con Artist, per the Daily Mail. Andrew claimed that Gibson moved in with an “old man” who lived near her mother as a young teenager. By 17, she had dropped out of high school, moved to Perth and was working at a health insurance call center, according to Women’s Weekly.

It was at this time that Gibson’s alleged health problems first arose. In May of 2009, she claimed to have had multiple heart operations and, at one point, said she died on the operating table, per the Daily Mail. That July, she claimed to receive a terminal brain cancer diagnosis with an alleged maximum of four months to live.

What is The Whole Pantry?

After allegedly receiving chemotherapy and radiation for two months, Gibson said she abandoned traditional medicine and adopted a holistic and alternative approach, per The Standard. She claimed to have taken on a plant-based diet, cut out gluten, dairy and GMO products and turned to oxygen therapy, colonics and Ayurvedic treatments, per Elle.

Gibson then claimed this regimen "cured" her alleged brain cancer and inspired her to launch her Instagram account, @healing_belle, in early 2013.

“I have been healing a severe and malignant brain cancer for the past few years with natural medicine, Gerson therapy and foods,” Gibson wrote in her first post, according to Women’s Weekly. “It’s working for me and I am grateful to be there sharing this journey.”

Within months, Gibson gained over 200,000 followers, according to The Standard. She then launched a health and wellness app called The Whole Pantry in August 2013. The app was an instant success: It was purchased around 200,000 times in the first month, which would have earned Gibson an estimated $1 million, according to Elle.

Over the next year, The Whole Pantry continued to take off. It was named Apple’s Best Food and Drink app in 2013 and was selected by the tech company as one of the few apps preloaded on the demo of the first Apple Watch. Gibson also nabbed a book deal with Penguin Press and released a cookbook, also titled The Whole Pantry, in October 2014.

However, inconsistencies in Gibson’s story began to emerge. In her cookbook, she wrote how her healthy diet and lifestyle had kept her brain tumor “stable for two years now with no growth of the cancer,” according to The Age. But in a July 2014 Instagram post, Gibson alleged that her cancer had spread to her “blood, spleen, brain, uterus and liver.”

Who is Jessica Ainscough?

Jessica Ainscough was another prominent Australian wellness influencer. Known as “The Wellness Warrior,” she had been diagnosed with a rare cancer, epithelioid sarcoma, in 2008, when she was just 22 years old, per ABC.

Ainscough wrote on her blog and in her 2013 book, Make Peace With Your Plate, about how she decided against the doctor’s treatment recommendations to amputate her arm and, instead, treated her cancer with “Gerson therapy.”

The untraditional treatment regimen involved "daily coffee enemas, a heavy regime of dietary supplements and following a strict organic, vegetarian diet," per The Guardian.

“I was diagnosed with a rare, ‘incurable’ cancer at 22. At 26, I am healing myself naturally,” Ainscough wrote on her blog, per Women’s Weekly. “I am ecstatic to report that it has worked for me.”

Ainscough, who Gibson reportedly called a “friend and mentor" on her Instagram, may have inspired the character of Milla Blake, who is played by Alycia Debnam-Carey, in Apple Cider Vinegar.

After documenting her experience with cancer for seven years, Ainscough died in March 2015, per The Guardian. Her health had taken a turn after her mother, who had also advocated for Gerson therapy, died from breast cancer in 2013.

“For the first time in my almost seven year journey with cancer, this year I’ve been really unwell,” Ainscough wrote on her blog, according to The Guardian. “I’ve lived with cancer since 2008 and for most of those years my condition was totally stable. When my mum became really ill, my cancer started to become aggressive again. After she died, things really started flaring up.”

After Ainscough’s death, Donnelly and Toscano said that Gibson’s relationship with the fellow influencer was also a fallacy. The journalists wrote in their book that Gibson showed up to Ainscough’s funeral uninvited and made a scene with over-the-top crying and wailing, per Women's Weekly.

What happened to Belle Gibson and The Whole Pantry?

In March 2015, Gibson’s wellness empire — and the lies she told to prop it up — began to unravel.

The Age reporters Donnelly and Toscano published an article on March 8, 2015, exposing Gibson’s lies about donations she had made to multiple charities. According to their reporting, Gibson had run two fundraisers to raise money for five charities but none of the organizations had received a donation from her or The Whole Pantry.

The influencer, when questioned by the outlet, blamed “cash flow” issues for the delay in donations. “The intentions always were and still are to give back,” she said at the time. “The execution of this has obviously been flawed.”

A follow-up article by The Age, published two days later, exposed inconsistencies in Gibson’s back story. Multiple people in her inner circle told the outlet they doubted her life story and cancer claims — and brought those questions to the influencer herself. Additionally, a top Australian neurosurgeon took issue with Gibson’s story of cancer survival.

“I wouldn't believe any of this unless I saw the pathology report with my own eyes and the pathology itself,” Professor Andrew Kaye, the director of neurosurgery at Royal Melbourne Hospital, told The Age.

The fallout for Gibson was swift. Within a week, The Whole Pantry app was pulled from the App Store, her U.S. cookbook launch was canceled and Penguin stripped The Whole Pantry from the shelves in Australia, per The Sydney Morning Herald.

Initially, Gibson tried to cover her tracks by deleting a swath of photos from her personal and The Whole Pantry Instagram accounts, shutting down her X account (then Twitter) and removing any social media traces of her illness, per Mashable — but it was too late.

Gibson eventually gave two interviews, one to Women’s Weekly in May 2015 and another to Australia’s 60 Minutes in June, where she admitted to her lies. However, Gibson's story differed in each interview, leaving many questions unanswered.

When speaking to Women’s Weekly, Gibson admitted she never had and did not currently have cancer. “None of it’s true,” she told the outlet.

However, Gibson claimed on 60 Minutes that she had been wrongfully diagnosed with cancer in 2009 — and did not discover she was healthy until sometime in 2015. The investigative show, though, obtained medical records that showed Gibson had a healthy brain scan in 2011. She also danced around questions about her age (Gibson claimed she was 26, while her birth records showed she was 23) and her real name.

“I lived for years with the fear that I was dying,” Gibson said in her televised interview. “I wasn’t living in a space where I didn’t know that this was my reality.”

She added, “I’ve not been intentionally untruthful. I’ve been openly speaking about what was my reality.”

Where is Belle Gibson now?

Since the collapse of her wellness empire, Gibson has been living life outside of the public eye — and reportedly avoiding paying the fines she owes to the Australian government for her fraud.

Gibson was fined $410,000 in September 2017, after Consumer Affairs Victoria conducted an in-depth investigation into The Whole Pantry founder and ruled that she had misled “vulnerable” cancer patients and consumers, per 9News and ABC.

However, she has reportedly dodged paying the fines for years, and in February 2021, the Federal Court declared her case “abandoned,” according to Women’s Weekly. Prior to this report, the government had raided Gibson's house twice to attempt to recoup the fine.

In addition to her professional demise, Gibson’s personal life has also reportedly unraveled in the years since her lies were exposed. In November 2023, her alleged longtime partner, Clive Rothwell, was photographed with another woman, per the Daily Mail.

During a court hearing in 2017, Gibson said Rothwell paid for a trip for herself and her young son, as well as often covered her rent, utilities and legal fees, per ABC.

After the first raid on her house in 2020, Gibson popped up again in a video advocating for the Oromo population in Australia. In the clip, she provided a different name and gave advice on how to continue the political fight for the Ethiopian people group.

The president of the Australian Oromo Community Association in Victoria, Tarekegn Chimdi, swiftly responded, denying Gibson's claims that she was a volunteer with the group and asked her to stop claiming involvement.

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