In 2014, Australia’s Elle magazine branded Belle Gibson — who shot to fame as a wellness influencer during Instagram’s early years with her incredible story of beating terminal brain cancer — “the most inspiring woman you’ve met this year.” Cosmopolitan honored her with its Fun Fearless Female award. Penguin published the single mom’s The Whole Pantry cookbook, which was based on the wildly successful recipe app of the same name she’d launched the previous year. That had been voted Apple’s best food and drink app and been selected to be pre-installed on the then-new Apple Watch.

But by 2015, Belle’s empire crumbled. An investigation by journalists Beau Donelly and Nick Toscano, authors of the 2017 book The Woman Who Fooled the World, discovered Belle, 33, hadn’t been truthful when she claimed she’d shunned traditional treatments such as chemotherapy and radiation in favor of nutrient-packed meals and natural remedies to cure her cancer — because, it turned out, she’d never had cancer at all. The twisted story about the Down Under fraudster’s downfall is now at the center of the new six-episode Netflix series Apple Cider Vinegar, which became the most watched show on the streamer following its February 6, 2025, debut. In dramatizing Belle’s story, Samantha Strauss — who created and cowrote the project — tried to find some “empathy” for the scammer, she told The Guardian, though ultimately, she couldn’t “absolve her of what she did.”

How Belle Gibson Got Caught In a Cancer Scandal

Belle lied about her health for years, according to reports. Before telling supporters she’d been given four months to live after learning she had a malignant brain tumor, she’d claimed she’d suffered a stroke and had briefly died while having heart surgery. In 2014, Belle wrote on Instagram that she’d developed “cancer in my blood, spleen, brain, uterus and liver.” She also said she’d given away 25 percent of The Whole Pantry’s profits to charitable causes and made donations to those in need.

That’s when it all unraveled. The Australian newspaper The Age confirmed the charities had no record of receiving the money. They also found inconsistencies in Belle’s stories about her health, age and upbringing. As the scandal grew, the high school dropout began deleting social media posts and accounts. She finally came clean in April 2015, admitting to Australia’s Women’s Weekly that she’d never had cancer. “None of it’s true,” she confessed.

But two months later, she shifted her story again, telling Australia’s 60 Minutes that someone she believed was a doctor wrongfully diagnosed her with the disease in 2009 but she didn’t learn until much later that she was actually healthy. “I’ve not been intentionally untruthful,” declared Belle, who has never faced criminal charges.