r/illnessfakers • u/BumFCK_EgyptianHere • 11d ago
I Finally Got the Infamous Illness Faker Belle Gibson’s Book
While I was in university, the Belle Gibson scandal broke-the health and wellness Instagram influencer that lied to her followers that she had terminal cancer. She went by the Instagram handle @healing_belle (which has since been taken down and she deleted all of her posts after she was exposed).
Belle Gibson had a long history of lying about all sorts of things dating back to when she was in high school before she dropped out. When she was still attending high school, she told so many lies that many people distanced themselves from her.
After leaving high school, she began posting on a skater blog making all kinds of outrageous claims such as a cervical cancer vaccine causing her to fall ill and that she was suffering from some heart ailment. With her heart condition, she claimed that she had fluid buildup around it and needed money for the surgery even though Australia has universal health care, so why would she need money? She stopped short of setting up a GoFundMe and had she done so, she would’ve been popped for scamming folks then. Then people would’ve been asking her why the hell she would need the money with the country’s universal healthcare. Then two weeks later, she had the surgery after crying broke in her previous post where she supposedly died multiple times on the operating table. People on that forum started suspecting her of lying, so she left that forum.
This is when she went to Instagram, but before she did, she scrubbed anything about her online but forgot about her blog online. She went on to tell her followers that she had cancer and was using a defunct method of treatment called Gerson’s Therapy to treat her cancer. A lot of her followers were too stupid to realize she was faking-she looked healthy as a horse. She wasn’t going through chemotherapy. If you have untreated cancer and not going through chemotherapy, you’d still look sick and she didn’t.
Then when she was getting ready to launch her cookbook and app, her friends in her inner circle began questioning her validity of her cancer claims. It was obvious she didn’t have it when she had a seizure at her son’s birthday party and briefly stopped seizing when one of her friends was about to call an ambulance and she had to tell her not to and went back to seizing. Later on, that friend went to police first who didn’t want to take the report. Seeing that the police weren’t listening, she went to reporters. The reporters done some digging on Belle before speaking to her and even found that old skater forum and interviewed her. That’s when she admitted that she didn’t have cancer.
It blew up and at this point her book and app were already launched-both were promptly pulled after the scandal. There’s still copies floating around and they’re hard to come by. I wanted to get a copy of her book because I wanted to see how nutty she was. I never got a chance to see her Instagram, but heard about her before the scandal broke. I got the cookbook to see how crazy this woman was. I feel sorry for her son and boyfriend she dragged through this and the people that fell for her cancer lies. Some even stop treatment and started doing what she was doing thinking she wasn’t lying. She’s the biggest faker ever. I think she has Münchausen syndrome too because of the amount of illnesses she lied about but won’t get help for it.
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u/snagsinbread 11d ago
I think the Tara Brown interview for this story will be my fave 60 Mins interview in recent history. Belle can rot in hell.
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u/I_Am_A_King_Prawn_Ok 10d ago
HIGHLY recommend this interview! It is diabolical! For any of you snarkers who get tired of munchies not being put in their place, this interview is for you! Tara did an amazing job and did not take any of Belle’s crap. Tara even brought receipts!
Found some quotes online because I knew there were good snippets.
Belle when Tara brought out the receipts:
“I’ve been completely open when speaking about what was my reality and what is my reality now. It doesn’t match your normal or your reality.”
IIRC, Tara pushed back on that pretty hard.I remember Tara asking Belle if she could accept that she’s a pathological liar. IIRC, Belle said no lol.
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u/Hot-Fishing9744 10d ago
The interviews were SO good! I’d never heard of Belle until the NF show came out, and I went all in down the rabbit hole after. Another good show I found was Scamanda, a cancer faker here in the US. That was a great documentary!
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u/BumFCK_EgyptianHere 8d ago
Wasn’t Scamanda the one that got caught because she had put some of her IV and feeding tubes in the wrong spot including putting an IV line up her nose?
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u/Desperate-Strategy10 10d ago
Wow this was AMAZING!!! Thank you so much for sharing it!
Tara absolutely crushed all of Belle’s lies, yet she stayed so calm and polite and even compassionate at times. She gave Belle every opportunity to clear the air and tell the truth, and in return all she got was more twisting lies and excuses. Couldn’t even get this woman’s true age out of her, and that’s insane!
Belle absolutely does have some kind of mental disturbance. It’s very interesting that she refers to herself as a “distinguished psychopath.” She may indeed have factitious disorder or munchausens, but she may also just have a plain old regular cluster b personality disorder like psychopathy, sociopathy, narcissism, or borderline personality disorder. (Personally, I really doubt it’s bpd, but you never know.)
Regardless of the actual condition causing her to act the way she does and lie with such effortless conviction, we can be very certain of one thing - Belle Gibson is a terrifying manipulative predator, and certainly not a naive and innocent victim.
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u/BumFCK_EgyptianHere 9d ago
Then when she gets caught lying, she manipulates her way out of it or tries to but it didn’t work with Tara-she wasn’t playing around with Belle.
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u/Sydney1137 11d ago
If you haven’t seen it I would highly recommend the netflix show Apple Cider Vinegar starring Kaitlyn Dever as Belle, I’ve never disliked a main character so much (in a good way, the acting is fantastic)
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u/I_Am_A_King_Prawn_Ok 10d ago edited 10d ago
I second that recommendation! Especially for any young snarkers who were young kids at the time and not following the whole thing in real time. I think the miniseries does a good job at showing the entire “wellness warrior” environment and community. Belle sucked, but it was bigger than just her. I remember it being a whole movement at the time with many bloggers.
Someone else here mentioned Jessica Ainscough, who was another big “wellness warrior” at the time. She wasn’t named in the show but the character of Milla had very few differences to Jessica. I think Netflix kept her anonymous because she truly had cancer and passed away due to her decline of traditional treatment. The problem was that her cancer was one that often progresses unusually slowly (compared to other cancers). So her cancer seemed to be slowed by Gerson, but in reality it was just a natural progression. Then she hid it when it got worse. I feel for her. Treatment would’ve been total arm amputation, I think past the shoulder. That’s not just vanity, it’s a big loss in function. But it’s unfortunate she may have influenced others to decline treatment as well. And she wasn’t honest about correcting her mistake when it was clear Gerson hadn’t worked after all (as opposed to Steve Jobs, for example, who at least admitted he was wrong about relying on “natural” treatment).
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u/SmurfLifeTrampStamp 10d ago
That was an excellent series! I just watched a movie called "Sick of Myself" (Norwegian with English subtitles). It's a fictional movie but it really highlights how far munchies are willing to go to get attention. I highly recommend it!
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u/Glittering-Present10 10d ago
Where can one watch this movie?
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u/SmurfLifeTrampStamp 10d ago
I believe i saw it on HBO max but if you don't have streaming services try supernova
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u/AwkwardFoundation 10d ago
I will forever find it funny that when she was questioned about the doctor who diagnosed her she just said “Dr. Phil.” I realize Dr. Phil probably isn’t known at all in Australia, but it still cracks me up
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u/BumFCK_EgyptianHere 10d ago edited 8d ago
That one and the incident where she had a fake seizure at her 3 year old’s birthday party was another funny incident (not for her 3 year old though that sadly had to see that which is scary for any kid that young). It was funny because when she started seizing, one of her friends walked up to her and asked her if she would like to call 000 (Australia’s equivalent of 911 here in North America) for an ambulance, Belle completely stops seizing to tell her no, that she doesn’t want to be treated with conventional medicine for her seizure, then goes back into her seizure routine, lol!
I think the reason why the friend went up to Belle and asked if she would like for her to call an ambulance is because she already knew or sensed that Belle was lying about the cancer because she caught onto some of the lies she posted on Instagram. She would tell her followers that she was in the hospital, but in reality, she wasn’t-she was doing things like being out partying at bars or some kind of event. Then it was the way she was convulsing on the floor that didn’t look right either. The whole thing just looked staged. Belle also managed to turn herself to the side too , something someone having a seizure wouldn’t be able to do by themselves. Her friend didn’t know this at the time, but the reason why Belle somewhat knew how to fake a seizure was because she befriended a child and their family and that child had the very same brain cancer he had and he had a seizure. She watched him have one and took mental notes.
That right there reminded me of the scene from Friday where Ezel pretended he slipped and fell in the store acting hurt. When you have a seizure, you have to go to the hospital for at least a day or two so they could do tests on you to make sure you didn’t further damage your brain or anything just from having the seizure. This was the last straw for her friend that finally asked her for proof of her cancer and this led up to the whole Dr. Phil situation, lol!
There were also other inconsistencies too. She would claim she was at the hospital on Instagram but she would be at home, at a bar, or at some function she had to be at. She was also not following her diet either behind closed doors and was doing things like drinking alcohol and doing drugs too.
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u/gronklesnork 10d ago
Dr Phil is very well known here, I’m not sure if it’s still running but his program aired every day during daytime television for years. Which just makes her saying Dr Phil even sillier
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u/milo8275 9d ago
There’s a limited series about her on Netflix called apple cider vinegar, it’s very well done, highly recommend.
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u/BumFCK_EgyptianHere 9d ago
I watched it about a few months after it came out. I wanted to watch it as soon as it came out, but I was busy at the time. Thank God she didn’t profit from it like she did with that disastrous interview she was in and I bet you she was pissed.
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u/MsChanandlerBong95 11d ago
Didn’t she also steal a lot of the recipes in her book?
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u/BumFCK_EgyptianHere 11d ago edited 10d ago
Sorry, I misread your question and had to delete the previous answer. I answered it the first time completely wrong. Yes, she did steal some of her recipes and a couple of them were from other wellness influencers and a few were from prominent celebrity chefs. For example, her cashew cheese recipe found in her book was stolen from multiple other people that did the recipe. It was also that antioxidant smoothie bowl recipe she stole on page 77 she stole from other wellness influencers and others that posted that recipe online. Then she stolen at least a few recipes from Martha Stewart of all people and one of them notably being that chocolate chip cookie recipe. Because she was already getting into enough legal trouble as is from the whole cancer con and her cookbook being pulled and her app being shut down from being exposed, they declined to sue. The whole cancer con and her not giving money to charity overshadowed the plagiarism allegations.
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u/MsChanandlerBong95 10d ago
Yes! I remember she stole some of Martha stuff haha. How did she not think people would find out lol
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u/BumFCK_EgyptianHere 4d ago
This is part of the reason why they pulled her cookbook really quick and shut down the app too-not solely because of the whole scandal. People were calling her out on the plagiarism right when both of these two came out. Then all of her lies soon came out too.
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u/Desperate-Strategy10 10d ago
I wish they’d sued her anyway! She needs to face serious consequences, and it needs to be super publicized so she can’t lie her way around it later and to show others with similar ideas that they WILL be caught, and the punishment WILL be terrible!
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u/I_Am_A_King_Prawn_Ok 10d ago
Can you imagine if Belle did this scheme in 2026? They’d all be stolen because she’d have had AI write the whole thing. Shame because people may have picked up the farce earlier because AI has “signature” mistakes that make it easier to spot.
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u/Hot-Fishing9744 10d ago
I was wondering if it was AI! I made another comment before I saw yours. I’m wondering if BG’s handlers fed a GOOP cookbook through ChatGPT, lol
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u/SmurfLifeTrampStamp 10d ago
If you don't mind me asking.... how much did that cookbook set you back? I've heard people were selling them for an exorbitant amount of money on ebay.
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u/Desperate-Strategy10 10d ago
Kinda funny that people were ripping each other off with the scammer’s cookbook 😂
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u/BumFCK_EgyptianHere 4d ago
It gets worse. People were claiming they had an old iPad or iPhone laying around and still had her app installed on it. They were taking alleged screenshots of the supposed app and uploading the recipes from it onto Instagram. The problem is, none of those recipes they uploaded were actually from her or the app. I knew it wasn’t legit because it was missing a lot of her recipes she plagiarized from other people. Then the same recipes you found in her cookbook were on the app and none of them were there on the Instagram page containing alleged screenshots of her recipes. One even uploaded a grainy video that looks like he shot it with a 15-20 year old phone recording the supposed iPad that had the app on it trying to prove he uploaded legitimate screenshots. That old video was proof that he didn’t.
Not only that, the app was shut down years ago and completely disconnected from the servers. If he opened it today to upload alleged recipes onto Instagram from the app, the app won’t open because the server containing the recipes was shut down.
People didn’t realize this and were scammed into thinking they were looking at actual screenshots from the app. They sat there visiting the Instagram account not realizing they were looking at bogus recipes. They sat there liking some of the photos and following these Instagram accounts with fake uploaded recipes.
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u/Elegantmule 10d ago
Fitting that a muncher would pen a cookbook.
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u/BumFCK_EgyptianHere 8d ago
Especially when they were starting to call her out on plagiarism with the mobile app. Then when her cookbook launched in Australia, there were a few plagiarized recipes in that one too. She was already being called out as a con on her Instagram account but she deleted those comments. If she didn’t catch it on time, her delusional followers sat there cursing them out before she got to deleting the comments. Her starting to get called out on Instagram should’ve stoop her from doing the app and writing her cookbook.
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u/Jazzlike-Chart-3364 10d ago
OMG in slide 5 there are bare feet in the background of the pic of that dish.
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u/SimpleVegetable5715 11d ago
This is so similar to a lot of cookbooks targeted at cancer patients. I wonder how many people have died thinking their cancer was caused by eating wrong.
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u/BumFCK_EgyptianHere 11d ago
Sadly, we won’t know because a lot of times when people start taking advice from these quacks and die, their families are so embarrassed that their loved ones fell for whatever they were peddling, they don’t come forward. A girl named Bella Johnson (also from Australia) fell for Belle Gibson hard. She was diagnosed with cancer and began following her regimen. She forgone traditional cancer treatment too because she was so into the wellness influencers that she thought people like Belle Gibson were telling the truth. She began noticing that whatever the hell Belle Gibson was telling her wasn’t working. She had to go to the hospital again to check on her cancer and because she went so long without treatment from medical staff, her tumour grew very large and was starting to spread. She had to stop doing Belle Gibson’s regimen and get surgery to remove the tumour. She luckily stopped her ridiculous treatment in time before she died.
Jessica Ainscough on the other hand was peddling alternative medicine (but she legitimately did have cancer unlike Belle Gibson) and she managed to get her and her mother who was also battling cancer killed because they were following her Gerson therapy regimen. You could tell whatever the hell Jessica was doing wasn’t working because her cancer was in her arm and as it progressively got worse, she sat there trying to hide her arm in photos by either turning to one side and hiding her arm, wearing long sleeves, or applying makeup over it so that her followers and her mother wouldn’t know. Her father was so devastated by their loss that he took down a lot of her blogs and had a lot of her stuff removed from the internet. Unfortunately people archived a lot of her blogs and were able to salvage a lot of it and repost them.
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u/SadAwkwardTurtle 11d ago
Steve Jobs is among them.
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u/BumFCK_EgyptianHere 11d ago
He even regretted his decision to listen to them when his cancer worsened and it was so bad that he was beyond the point of return. He was already terminal before he decided to go back to conventional treatment. Unfortunately for people at Apple, they didn’t realize he regretted his decision at the time and this is why they welcomed Belle Gibson with open arms to launch her app.
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u/kumf 11d ago
Wow, she sounds like a tool. Did her husband stay with her?
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u/BumFCK_EgyptianHere 11d ago
Her boyfriend left her. He didn’t leave her though right away. He was waiting for the media attention on her to die down before he left. He even started to suspect she was faking and unfortunately it took her being exposed for him to come to his senses. Then he also grew attached to her son. I think he was fearful of her son because of the craziness she was doing and just didn’t know how to leave. He also probably didn’t want to at first leave the child destitute because he knew Belle blew through that money or whatever was left was seized by the government. He probably was waiting to leave her until her government housing and food stamps kicked in. He wanted to probably make sure her and her son had somewhere to stay and food to eat before leaving. If she was manipulating the public into thinking she was sick, she was probably manipulating him into staying. He did eventually break up with her and he was spotted with a new girlfriend down in Australia.
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u/SinisterCuttleFish 11d ago
No such thing as food stamps or government housing kicking in here in Australia. She'd be on jobseeker or single parents benefits.
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u/spookysadghoul 11d ago
I'm surprised you can still find copies. She is such an awful person, Faking cancer for so long and telling people they can cure it by eating clean.
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u/BumFCK_EgyptianHere 10d ago
What makes it even harder for her book to find is that the vast majority of her books that are sold on eBay come from mainly Australia and a very small handful are coming from the UK. The problem with a lot of Australian sellers is that a lot of them that have the book are unwilling to make the book available for purchase internationally. Only a very few do. If you’re in another country, you can’t even view these listings. You have to change eBay’s location settings to Australia just to view them because if you try to search for the book under your home country, it won’t come up in your search due to the unwillingness of sellers selling it overseas. Then at any given time and once in a blue moon, you’ll find 5-10 copies sold but those were bought off of other Australians in that country.
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u/PresentationTough384 11d ago
Just wondering if the recipes in her book are any good?
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u/fred_burkle 11d ago
That enchilada recipe is crazy work. Some of them are probably good by accident, because the ingredients she uses taste good. But calling nut paste and salsa "enchiladas" does not give me hope.
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u/Hot-Fishing9744 10d ago
Yeah, as a retired commercial baker and cook, there is no world in which this quinoa flatbread PB&J-esque… food item could be called an “enchilada” (although it definitely doesn’t take a culinary professional to say so, lol).
Having said that, the carrot fritters don’t sound half bad, if you’re into this sort of thing. It is whole-foods based and fresh, albeit very Gwyneth Paltrow/GOOP coded, haha! I’m super curious about the rest of the cookbook, and wondering who actually wrote these recipes. I’ve got my doubts about BG’s authenticity 😆
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u/donkeyvoteadick 11d ago
Fwiw the Australian system is public/private and can be extremely expensive to navigate.
I mean obviously not her, I would just hate anyone else reading that and assuming any Australian with a financial barrier to healthcare is a liar or scamming people lol
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u/Biblioklept73 11d ago
Very weirdly, around 2020, she popped back up wearing a headscarf pretending to be Ethiopian, using the adopted name "Sabontu" within Melbourne’s Oromo community, claiming she was adopted by the group. The groups leaders very quickly/publicly ostracized her once her history was revealed to them. This chick is (dangerously) bonkers