Wellness Blogger Fakes Natural Cure

belle gibsonBelle Gibson, who built up an enormous social medial following with her wellness blog is now facing legal action for faking terminal cancer which she claimed was cured using natural remedies.

The Telegraph is reporting on legal action launched in Australia’s federal court last week against Gibson, a “wellness blogger” who faked terminal brain cancer then claimed she was cured through natural remedies. She used the claim to promote her natural food business while promising her huge social media following to give some of her profits to charity.

As it turns out, Gibson lied about everything – the cancer, the cures, and the money she supposedly donated to charities such as providing birthing kits for women in developing countries and building a school in Sierra Leone. The charities reported receiving nothing from her.

Instead, Gibson pocketed the more than $1 million she earned in book sales and phone app and treated herself to $2,000 handbags and designed clothes. The International Business Times (IBT) reports that at the height of her success, she was able to buy herself a BMW and a beach side loft.

To this day, Gibson maintains her innocence, saying that she was wrongly diagnosed in 2009 by a German alternative medical practitioner who said she had brain cancer. Two years later, at the same time that she launched her new alternative health business, she underwent a brain scan at Alfred hospital that showed she was perfectly healthy. However, rather than coming clean, she continued on with the launch of The Whole Pantry mobile home wellness app as well as a cookbook by the same name.

whole pantry appHer shtick was telling people she had successfully treated terminal brain cancer with a healthy diet rather than radiation and chemotherapy.

She didn’t come clean until 2015 when she admitted in an interview with the Australian Women’s Weekly magazine that she didn’t have cancer and had fabricated the diagnosis which supposedly gave her only months to live.

“None of it’s true,” she said during the interview. “I am still jumping between what I think I know and what is reality. I have lived it and I’m not really there yet.”

Gibson’s scam caused international outrage, especially among followers who were genuinely suffering from cancer.

But it’s about to get much worse. As the Telegraph reports, Jane Garrett, the Victorian state minister for consumer affairs, said legal action has been launched to prevent a repeat of the scam by Gibson or others.

In addition, Penguin Australia, the publisher of Gibson’s cookbook, has agreed to pay 15,000 pounds to the Victorian Consumer Law Fund after admitting that it failed to verify her claims.

The IBT calls it a “landmark move” that is bound to have a deleterious effect on the self-help movement. “Penguin will have to obtain a medical diagnosis before publishing any book about people’s health claims. Added to that, it must also include warnings on every book on natural or alternative therapies,” they report.

Believe it or not, Gibson isn’t the least bit sorry about what she did, says her mother, Natalie Dal-Bello.

After refuting many of Gibson’s other lies, such as how she was taking care of the family since she was five and that she took care of her autistic brother (who was never autistic), Dal-Bello admitted how embarrassed she is about the whole charade.

“I can’t tell you how embarrassed we are about what she has done,” Dal-Bello told Australian Women’s Weekly  about the daughter she hasn’t seen in four years. “She just plucked bits and pieces of other people’s medical problems and assumed them as her own. She had a heart problem growing up, but that was it … She doesn’t seem to be sorry. There doesn’t appear to be any remorse. I’ve never seen her cry in her life.”

Gibson may be feeling very sorry very soon. She is now facing legal action and penalties of more than 500,000 pounds for profiting from the scam.

 

Comments are closed.