February 19, 2025 • 13 mins
Netflix's new series "Apple Cider Vinegar" has reignited interest in one of Australia's most notorious wellness scams - the story of Belle Gibson; the wellness influencer who claimed she cured her terminal cancer through clean eating.
And as outrageous as some of the storylines in the show may be, turns out there may be more truth to them than first expected.
Today we separate fact from fiction in the Netflix series, and revisit the true story of how one woman's lies shook the foundations of the wellness industry.
Listen to True Crime Conversations interview with Chanelle McAuliffe here
Read more about Apple Cider Vinegar here
THE END BITS
Support independent women's media
Check out The Quicky Instagram here
Support independent women's media here
GET IN TOUCH
Share your story, feedback, or dilemma! Send us a voice note or email us at thequicky@mamamia.com.au
CREDITS
Host: Claire Murphy & Taylah Strano
Guest: Chelsea Hui, Writer at Mamamia
Executive Producer: Taylah Strano
Audio Producers: Lu Hill
Become a Mamamia subscriber: https://www.mamamia.com.au/subscribe
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
Hey, I'm Taylor Strano. This is Mamma MIA's twice daily
news podcast, The Quickie.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Start from when you first wait about having braincat No,
I didn't.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
Ever lie about that.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Netflix's newest series, Apple Cider Vinegar, has everyone talking. But
how much of this shocking Australian.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Story is actually true?
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Before we dive into Australia's biggest wellness scam, here's Clemurphy
with the latest from the Quicki newsroom for Thursday February twenty.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
ASYO boss Mike Burgess is warning there's a rising tide
of Australian children being radicalized online, with AI fueled algorithms
making it easier than ever to find extremist material. Burgess
has called on large tech companies to work with authorities
and act responsibly by stopping harmful algorithms, saying I hope
they want that for their child. Of the five terror
(01:00):
plots ASIO disrupted in twenty twenty four, almost all of
them involved miners, mister Burgess saying that radicalized miners can
pose the same credible terrorist threat as adults. Exacerbated by
the impact of social media, mental health and the spread
of misinformation and conspiracy theories, Azio also intervened to stop
foreign agents luring Australians overseas where they plan to either
(01:23):
injure or kill them, saying the plan to arrange an
accident was foiled when the intelligence agency helped stop the
travel plans. The woman accused of attacking two Muslim women
at a shopping center in Melbourne last week has sobbed
over her mother in court while one of her victims
explained how she remains traumatized. The thirty one year old
alleged attacker has been accused of assaulting pregnant woman Ila
(01:44):
for Alisawi, and then ten minutes later attacking another woman.
Both were wearing a hijob. The alleged victim explained how
she was ambushed before she was slapped with a closed
fist across the face and chest before being shoved to
the ground. The childcare worker, who was grocery shopping while
on her lunch break, says the incident left her shaking
and barely able to talk or breathe, and now says
(02:04):
she still can't believe that it happened to her, and
that she feels traumatized and has trouble sleeping due to
the painful bruising. The alleged attacker, who's belief to have
been diagnosed with schizophrenia, will be back in court again today.
US President Donald Trump has called Ukraine's leader Vladimir Zelensky
a dictator. In a lengthy post on social media, Trump
wrote that Zelenski was a moderately successful comedian who managed
(02:27):
to talk the US into spending three hundred and fifty
billion dollars to go into a war that couldn't be won,
that never had to start, but a war that he,
without the US and Trump, would never be able to settle.
Trump went on to say that Zelenski has admitted half
the money the US sent him was missing, that he
refuses to hold elections, is polling very low in Ukraine,
and that the only thing he was good at was
(02:48):
playing Biden like a fiddle. Ukraine hasn't held elections since
twenty nineteen due to the ongoing war with Russia, a
move that was met with approval from the Ukrainian people,
and while Zelenski's popularity has dropped from its incredible high
in twenty twenty three at eighty five percent, he still
remains the most popular and trusted politician in Ukraine. Vladimir
Zelenski also said there's no missing aid money and that
(03:10):
none had been laundered, but rather that'd received less than
half the one hundred and seventy seven billion in aid
promised to them by the US. Zelenski has accused Trump
of living in a Russian disinformation state. After a wildly
successful twenty twenty four touring the world to talk about
her movie Wicked, Cynthia Arrivo has been named as the
host of the twenty twenty five Tony Awards. The thirty
(03:32):
eight year old will take to the stage to help
honor the theater community when the awards kick off on
June eighth. Arrivos saying she's proud and excited to take
the glorious honor that she's looking for to ushering the
theater community at large through a night that celebrates the
wonderful performances that people have witnessed throughout the year, saying
she hopes she can rise to the occasion. The host
of the past three years, Arianna Deboe, said she probably
(03:53):
wouldn't be back for a fourth any time soon because
she was craving being back on stage in a larger
way than simply hosting the Tonys.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
That's what's happening in the world today. Next, the truth
behind the wellness empire built on lies. If you were
in Australia around twenty fifteen, you probably remember the name
Belle Gibson.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
For a person living with brain cancer Maata and you
look incredibly healthy.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
What are your top tips for health?
Speaker 4 (04:24):
I think it's about getting back to the fundamentals of
a healthy life.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
People overthink it.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
She was the wellness influencer who captured international attention with
her incredible story claiming she'd cured her terminal brain cancer
through alternative therapies and clean eating. Her ath and cookbook
The Whole Pantry made her a global sensation. But there
was just one problem. It was all a lie. Gibson
(04:52):
hadn't just lied about having cancer. She'd promised to donate
three hundred thousand dollars from her cookbook profits to various charities,
money that never materialized. When journalists from the Age and
The Australian started digging, Gibson's empire crumbled, eventually leading to
a four hundred and ten thousand dollars fine from Consumer
Affairs Victoria. Now Netflix is telling her story, but with
(05:15):
some creative liberties, while some moments are ripped straight from
the headlines, like Gibson's infamous pink Jumper interview on sixty Minutes.
Speaker 5 (05:24):
I don't mean to be crass about it, but it
was also the fact that despite being given a four
month deadline, you're still alive. Yeah, an indicator to you
that you didn't have brain cancer. It wasn't an indicator.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Others have been dramatized for effect to help us separate
fact from fiction. In Apple Cider Vinegar were joined by
Muma Mia writer Chelsea Hoy, who's been investigating what really happened. Chelse,
Obviously parts of this story have been fictionalized for TV,
but large chunks of it did actually happen. What are
some of the more shocking moments that really took place.
Speaker 4 (06:01):
There's a scene in the show where Belle Gibson shows
up to a wellness influencer Miller's funeral and makes sort
of like a massive scene, and I I was surprised
to find out that that actually happened in real life.
Bell Gibson did show up to influencer jess Ainkoff's funeral,
who many have been saying was part of the inspiration
for Miller's character, and despite a lot of people claiming
they weren't really friends, she started uncontrollably crying at the funeral,
(06:25):
which obviously made a lot of friends and family super
uncomfortable there, and she reportedly at one point even pulled
Ain's Coff's fiance into a bedroom to cry on his shoulder,
which is bizarre.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
One of the other moments in the show that I
know that I was googling a lot of other people googling,
was the story surrounding Bell Gibson's miscarriage.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Do we know if that actually happened?
Speaker 4 (06:49):
So the miscarriage scene in the show is actually based
off of real claims that the real Bell Gibson made
about her own miscarriage that she suffered in twenty twelve. Obviously,
given her history with lying about her health claims, a
lot of people were very skeptical about whether this was true,
But when she was interviewed by Women's Weekly in twenty fifteen,
Gibson's reaction to the questions was reportedly very emotional, and
(07:12):
she became visibly upset and refused to really discuss any
details about it, but did deny any accusations that it
was fabricated.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
What about the money she raised?
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Usually when something fills off, we're told to follow the money,
and that's usually how we get to the bottom of
a story. In this case, though, we heard about all
this money that Bell Gibson had raised and she was
going to donate it to all these various causes.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
And people who needed it. In the show, though.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
We see that it didn't really eventuate for anybody. What
about in real life?
Speaker 4 (07:39):
So part of the reason Bell was actually caught in
the end was due to unpaid charity pledges. She had
promised to donate profits from a cookbook to various causes,
as you were saying, and investigations revealed that the majority
of these donations, reportedly around three hundred thousand dollars, were
never seen. So, for example, on the show, she pledges
to raise money for a little boy for surgery and doesn't.
(08:00):
And this actually happened in real life. So Gibbs and
raised funds for Joshua Schwartz, who was diagnosed with terminal
brain cancer in twenty thirteen at the age of five.
Parents claim that they didn't actually know about the fundraiser,
and Indie end didn't see a center of that.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
My gosh, okay, let's talk a little bit about the
characters in the show. Can you explain to us who
Miller is and who she's linked to in real life?
You mentioned Jess ains Cough before, so.
Speaker 4 (08:25):
The character Miller has been quite a controversial one since
the release of the show. So while the actress who
plays Miller has said the character is inspired by the
wellness influenza Jesse ains Cough, the show's creator, Samantha Strauss,
has claimed that Miller's more of like a composite of
several different people in the wellness space, but Miller does
share several similarities to Jesse ain's Cough, who wasn't wellness
(08:47):
influenza known as the wellness Warrior who built a really
successful brand blogging about choosing natural feeling over conventional medicine
to cure her cancer, and she sadly passed away in
twenty fifteen at the age of twenty nine. But since
the show's release, Ainskoff's family have since spoken out and
expressed their discontent at the portrayal and claiming that it's
(09:08):
been highly an accurate.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
What about Chanell.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
That's actually a real life person and that's really her
name isn't it.
Speaker 4 (09:14):
Yeah, So, Chanel on the show is loosely based on
a real person, Bell Gibson's former best friend, Chanelle mccauliffe.
According to The Times, the real Chanell first cross paths
with Belle at the launch party for the Whole Pantry,
but over time Chanel began to kind of notice cracks
and Gibson's story, and after discovering that she was lying
about her cancer diagnosis and misleading a lot of people,
(09:35):
Chanell made it her sort of mission to expose the
truth and became the whistleblower who tipped off journalists Snick
Tuscano and Bodanelli of Bell's deception.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
And we see that sort of from the very first
episode in Apple Cider Vinegar too, don't we Yeah?
Speaker 4 (09:48):
Correct?
Speaker 2 (09:49):
What about Belle herself?
Speaker 1 (09:51):
How much do you think of what we see on
screen is actually reflective of the real life Bell Gibson?
Speaker 4 (09:56):
Well, I feel like Netflix has prefaced the show is
a truish story based on a lie, which I think
rings true. There's obviously a lot of fictional aspects of
the show, including some of the sporting characters in their storylines.
Some things including the relationship between Miller and Bell has
obviously been dramatized, and a lot of the private conversations
and intentions I assume, But I would say that for
(10:16):
the most part, a lot of the events shown, even
the more shocking and unbelievable ones, are a fairly accurate
depiction of sort of what happened and what this woman.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Did before we let you go, ChEls.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
I know that I am not the only person, but
since this show was released and Bell Gibson has inevitably
become back in the headlines, I've googled so much to
find out where Belle Gibson is now, what's happening now?
We know that she was slapped with a fine just
over four hundred thousand dollars. Like you mentioned, consumer Affairs
Victoria at chasing her for that? Do we know if
she ever actually paid that fine back? In what she's
(10:49):
doing now?
Speaker 4 (10:50):
So they did not ever see that money that she
was fined. As of twenty twenty five, Bell Gibson are
still not paid to fines, and the fines had reportedly
grown to more than half a million dollars in twenty
twenty after she had failed to pay, and her home
has actually been raided twice in an attempt to recoup
those fines. As of right now. Back in twenty twenty,
(11:11):
some media investigations had tracked her down to Melbourne and
she was discovered involved in Melbourne's Ethiopian community, where she
had sort of reinvented herself and was living under a
completely new name. And since the scandal, she's largely kind
of disappeared from public view.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
It's a question as well that I think a lot
of us ask is did she ever go to prison?
It feels like there's a lot of punishable crimes that
happened here.
Speaker 4 (11:36):
She did not go to prison, despite being found guilty
of five breaches of consumer law. She hasn't spent any
time in jail. She did appear in court in twenty
seventeen and was ordered, as we've mentioned, to pay that
four hundred and ten thousand dollars in relation to unconscionable conduct.
As of right now, no jail time.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
If you want even more of the real life story
of Bell Gibson and ultimately the unraveling of her lies,
today our friends over on the True Crime Conversations podcast
sat down with the real life Chanel Yep, Bell's ex
besting Chanelle mccauliffe to relive the story through her account.
Speaker 6 (12:09):
They basically demanded her to go get any medical evidence
to prove that she had cancer, any scans, any hospital
doctor reports. She said that she didn't like to keep
those documents because it's negative energy in her house. I
asked her about this stage four diagnosis that she had
just announced, and I said, what hospital did you go
(12:31):
to to get that diagnosis? I'm sure that it was
a major hospital in Melbourne and she said she didn't
go to a hospital. She went to some random doctor's
house in the suburbs. He picked her up and drove
her there and gave her the diagnosis. And I asked
her who was that doctor? What's his name? And she said,
doctor Phil.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
There'll be a link to listen to the whole episode
in our show notes, and if you want to read
more on the fact and fiction of Apple Side of Vinegar,
we'll pop some stories from the Mamma Mea team in
our show notes too. Thanks for taking some time to
feed her mind with us today. The quickie is produced
by Meg Tailor Strano and Claire Murphy, with audio production
by lou Hill.
Hey, I'm Taylor Strano. This is Mamma MIA's twice daily
news podcast, The Quickie.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Start from when you first wait about having braincat No,
I didn't.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
Ever lie about that.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Netflix's newest series, Apple Cider Vinegar, has everyone talking. But
how much of this shocking Australian.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Story is actually true?
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Before we dive into Australia's biggest wellness scam, here's Clemurphy
with the latest from the Quicki newsroom for Thursday February twenty.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
ASYO boss Mike Burgess is warning there's a rising tide
of Australian children being radicalized online, with AI fueled algorithms
making it easier than ever to find extremist material. Burgess
has called on large tech companies to work with authorities
and act responsibly by stopping harmful algorithms, saying I hope
they want that for their child. Of the five terror
(01:00):
plots ASIO disrupted in twenty twenty four, almost all of
them involved miners, mister Burgess saying that radicalized miners can
pose the same credible terrorist threat as adults. Exacerbated by
the impact of social media, mental health and the spread
of misinformation and conspiracy theories, Azio also intervened to stop
foreign agents luring Australians overseas where they plan to either
(01:23):
injure or kill them, saying the plan to arrange an
accident was foiled when the intelligence agency helped stop the
travel plans. The woman accused of attacking two Muslim women
at a shopping center in Melbourne last week has sobbed
over her mother in court while one of her victims
explained how she remains traumatized. The thirty one year old
alleged attacker has been accused of assaulting pregnant woman Ila
(01:44):
for Alisawi, and then ten minutes later attacking another woman.
Both were wearing a hijob. The alleged victim explained how
she was ambushed before she was slapped with a closed
fist across the face and chest before being shoved to
the ground. The childcare worker, who was grocery shopping while
on her lunch break, says the incident left her shaking
and barely able to talk or breathe, and now says
(02:04):
she still can't believe that it happened to her, and
that she feels traumatized and has trouble sleeping due to
the painful bruising. The alleged attacker, who's belief to have
been diagnosed with schizophrenia, will be back in court again today.
US President Donald Trump has called Ukraine's leader Vladimir Zelensky
a dictator. In a lengthy post on social media, Trump
wrote that Zelenski was a moderately successful comedian who managed
(02:27):
to talk the US into spending three hundred and fifty
billion dollars to go into a war that couldn't be won,
that never had to start, but a war that he,
without the US and Trump, would never be able to settle.
Trump went on to say that Zelenski has admitted half
the money the US sent him was missing, that he
refuses to hold elections, is polling very low in Ukraine,
and that the only thing he was good at was
(02:48):
playing Biden like a fiddle. Ukraine hasn't held elections since
twenty nineteen due to the ongoing war with Russia, a
move that was met with approval from the Ukrainian people,
and while Zelenski's popularity has dropped from its incredible high
in twenty twenty three at eighty five percent, he still
remains the most popular and trusted politician in Ukraine. Vladimir
Zelenski also said there's no missing aid money and that
(03:10):
none had been laundered, but rather that'd received less than
half the one hundred and seventy seven billion in aid
promised to them by the US. Zelenski has accused Trump
of living in a Russian disinformation state. After a wildly
successful twenty twenty four touring the world to talk about
her movie Wicked, Cynthia Arrivo has been named as the
host of the twenty twenty five Tony Awards. The thirty
(03:32):
eight year old will take to the stage to help
honor the theater community when the awards kick off on
June eighth. Arrivos saying she's proud and excited to take
the glorious honor that she's looking for to ushering the
theater community at large through a night that celebrates the
wonderful performances that people have witnessed throughout the year, saying
she hopes she can rise to the occasion. The host
of the past three years, Arianna Deboe, said she probably
(03:53):
wouldn't be back for a fourth any time soon because
she was craving being back on stage in a larger
way than simply hosting the Tonys.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
That's what's happening in the world today. Next, the truth
behind the wellness empire built on lies. If you were
in Australia around twenty fifteen, you probably remember the name
Belle Gibson.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
For a person living with brain cancer Maata and you
look incredibly healthy.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
What are your top tips for health?
Speaker 4 (04:24):
I think it's about getting back to the fundamentals of
a healthy life.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
People overthink it.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
She was the wellness influencer who captured international attention with
her incredible story claiming she'd cured her terminal brain cancer
through alternative therapies and clean eating. Her ath and cookbook
The Whole Pantry made her a global sensation. But there
was just one problem. It was all a lie. Gibson
(04:52):
hadn't just lied about having cancer. She'd promised to donate
three hundred thousand dollars from her cookbook profits to various charities,
money that never materialized. When journalists from the Age and
The Australian started digging, Gibson's empire crumbled, eventually leading to
a four hundred and ten thousand dollars fine from Consumer
Affairs Victoria. Now Netflix is telling her story, but with
(05:15):
some creative liberties, while some moments are ripped straight from
the headlines, like Gibson's infamous pink Jumper interview on sixty Minutes.
Speaker 5 (05:24):
I don't mean to be crass about it, but it
was also the fact that despite being given a four
month deadline, you're still alive. Yeah, an indicator to you
that you didn't have brain cancer. It wasn't an indicator.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Others have been dramatized for effect to help us separate
fact from fiction. In Apple Cider Vinegar were joined by
Muma Mia writer Chelsea Hoy, who's been investigating what really happened. Chelse,
Obviously parts of this story have been fictionalized for TV,
but large chunks of it did actually happen. What are
some of the more shocking moments that really took place.
Speaker 4 (06:01):
There's a scene in the show where Belle Gibson shows
up to a wellness influencer Miller's funeral and makes sort
of like a massive scene, and I I was surprised
to find out that that actually happened in real life.
Bell Gibson did show up to influencer jess Ainkoff's funeral,
who many have been saying was part of the inspiration
for Miller's character, and despite a lot of people claiming
they weren't really friends, she started uncontrollably crying at the funeral,
(06:25):
which obviously made a lot of friends and family super
uncomfortable there, and she reportedly at one point even pulled
Ain's Coff's fiance into a bedroom to cry on his shoulder,
which is bizarre.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
One of the other moments in the show that I
know that I was googling a lot of other people googling,
was the story surrounding Bell Gibson's miscarriage.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Do we know if that actually happened?
Speaker 4 (06:49):
So the miscarriage scene in the show is actually based
off of real claims that the real Bell Gibson made
about her own miscarriage that she suffered in twenty twelve. Obviously,
given her history with lying about her health claims, a
lot of people were very skeptical about whether this was true,
But when she was interviewed by Women's Weekly in twenty fifteen,
Gibson's reaction to the questions was reportedly very emotional, and
(07:12):
she became visibly upset and refused to really discuss any
details about it, but did deny any accusations that it
was fabricated.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
What about the money she raised?
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Usually when something fills off, we're told to follow the money,
and that's usually how we get to the bottom of
a story. In this case, though, we heard about all
this money that Bell Gibson had raised and she was
going to donate it to all these various causes.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
And people who needed it. In the show, though.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
We see that it didn't really eventuate for anybody. What
about in real life?
Speaker 4 (07:39):
So part of the reason Bell was actually caught in
the end was due to unpaid charity pledges. She had
promised to donate profits from a cookbook to various causes,
as you were saying, and investigations revealed that the majority
of these donations, reportedly around three hundred thousand dollars, were
never seen. So, for example, on the show, she pledges
to raise money for a little boy for surgery and doesn't.
(08:00):
And this actually happened in real life. So Gibbs and
raised funds for Joshua Schwartz, who was diagnosed with terminal
brain cancer in twenty thirteen at the age of five.
Parents claim that they didn't actually know about the fundraiser,
and Indie end didn't see a center of that.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
My gosh, okay, let's talk a little bit about the
characters in the show. Can you explain to us who
Miller is and who she's linked to in real life?
You mentioned Jess ains Cough before, so.
Speaker 4 (08:25):
The character Miller has been quite a controversial one since
the release of the show. So while the actress who
plays Miller has said the character is inspired by the
wellness influenza Jesse ains Cough, the show's creator, Samantha Strauss,
has claimed that Miller's more of like a composite of
several different people in the wellness space, but Miller does
share several similarities to Jesse ain's Cough, who wasn't wellness
(08:47):
influenza known as the wellness Warrior who built a really
successful brand blogging about choosing natural feeling over conventional medicine
to cure her cancer, and she sadly passed away in
twenty fifteen at the age of twenty nine. But since
the show's release, Ainskoff's family have since spoken out and
expressed their discontent at the portrayal and claiming that it's
(09:08):
been highly an accurate.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
What about Chanell.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
That's actually a real life person and that's really her
name isn't it.
Speaker 4 (09:14):
Yeah, So, Chanel on the show is loosely based on
a real person, Bell Gibson's former best friend, Chanelle mccauliffe.
According to The Times, the real Chanell first cross paths
with Belle at the launch party for the Whole Pantry,
but over time Chanel began to kind of notice cracks
and Gibson's story, and after discovering that she was lying
about her cancer diagnosis and misleading a lot of people,
(09:35):
Chanell made it her sort of mission to expose the
truth and became the whistleblower who tipped off journalists Snick
Tuscano and Bodanelli of Bell's deception.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
And we see that sort of from the very first
episode in Apple Cider Vinegar too, don't we Yeah?
Speaker 4 (09:48):
Correct?
Speaker 2 (09:49):
What about Belle herself?
Speaker 1 (09:51):
How much do you think of what we see on
screen is actually reflective of the real life Bell Gibson?
Speaker 4 (09:56):
Well, I feel like Netflix has prefaced the show is
a truish story based on a lie, which I think
rings true. There's obviously a lot of fictional aspects of
the show, including some of the sporting characters in their storylines.
Some things including the relationship between Miller and Bell has
obviously been dramatized, and a lot of the private conversations
and intentions I assume, But I would say that for
(10:16):
the most part, a lot of the events shown, even
the more shocking and unbelievable ones, are a fairly accurate
depiction of sort of what happened and what this woman.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Did before we let you go, ChEls.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
I know that I am not the only person, but
since this show was released and Bell Gibson has inevitably
become back in the headlines, I've googled so much to
find out where Belle Gibson is now, what's happening now?
We know that she was slapped with a fine just
over four hundred thousand dollars. Like you mentioned, consumer Affairs
Victoria at chasing her for that? Do we know if
she ever actually paid that fine back? In what she's
(10:49):
doing now?
Speaker 4 (10:50):
So they did not ever see that money that she
was fined. As of twenty twenty five, Bell Gibson are
still not paid to fines, and the fines had reportedly
grown to more than half a million dollars in twenty
twenty after she had failed to pay, and her home
has actually been raided twice in an attempt to recoup
those fines. As of right now. Back in twenty twenty,
(11:11):
some media investigations had tracked her down to Melbourne and
she was discovered involved in Melbourne's Ethiopian community, where she
had sort of reinvented herself and was living under a
completely new name. And since the scandal, she's largely kind
of disappeared from public view.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
It's a question as well that I think a lot
of us ask is did she ever go to prison?
It feels like there's a lot of punishable crimes that
happened here.
Speaker 4 (11:36):
She did not go to prison, despite being found guilty
of five breaches of consumer law. She hasn't spent any
time in jail. She did appear in court in twenty
seventeen and was ordered, as we've mentioned, to pay that
four hundred and ten thousand dollars in relation to unconscionable conduct.
As of right now, no jail time.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
If you want even more of the real life story
of Bell Gibson and ultimately the unraveling of her lies,
today our friends over on the True Crime Conversations podcast
sat down with the real life Chanel Yep, Bell's ex
besting Chanelle mccauliffe to relive the story through her account.
Speaker 6 (12:09):
They basically demanded her to go get any medical evidence
to prove that she had cancer, any scans, any hospital
doctor reports. She said that she didn't like to keep
those documents because it's negative energy in her house. I
asked her about this stage four diagnosis that she had
just announced, and I said, what hospital did you go
(12:31):
to to get that diagnosis? I'm sure that it was
a major hospital in Melbourne and she said she didn't
go to a hospital. She went to some random doctor's
house in the suburbs. He picked her up and drove
her there and gave her the diagnosis. And I asked
her who was that doctor? What's his name? And she said,
doctor Phil.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
There'll be a link to listen to the whole episode
in our show notes, and if you want to read
more on the fact and fiction of Apple Side of Vinegar,
we'll pop some stories from the Mamma Mea team in
our show notes too. Thanks for taking some time to
feed her mind with us today. The quickie is produced
by Meg Tailor Strano and Claire Murphy, with audio production
by lou Hill.
Popular Podcasts
True Crime Tonight
If you eat, sleep, and breathe true crime, TRUE CRIME TONIGHT is serving up your nightly fix. Five nights a week, KT STUDIOS & iHEART RADIO invite listeners to pull up a seat for an unfiltered look at the biggest cases making headlines, celebrity scandals, and the trials everyone is watching. With a mix of expert analysis, hot takes, and listener call-ins, TRUE CRIME TONIGHT goes beyond the headlines to uncover the twists, turns, and unanswered questions that keep us all obsessed—because, at TRUE CRIME TONIGHT, there’s a seat for everyone. Whether breaking down crime scene forensics, scrutinizing serial killers, or debating the most binge-worthy true crime docs, True Crime Tonight is the fresh, fast-paced, and slightly addictive home for true crime lovers.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.