Where Is Belle Gibson Now? All About the “Apple Cider Vinegar” Subject's Life After Faking Multiple Cancers

At the start of 2015, Belle Gibson was at the peak of her wellness empire.

The Australian health and wellness influencer had hundreds of thousands of followers on social media, an acclaimed food and beverage app called The Whole Pantry and an international book deal under her belt — all as a 26-year-old single mother. And, according to Gibson, she had managed to achieve it all while simultaneously battling multiple cancers that had spread throughout her body.

Gibson’s popularity and success was built on her claims that she had cured a malignant brain tumor by eating a healthy diet and adopting holistic treatments. She also wooed followers with her reported generosity, touting that she had donated upwards of $300,000 from The Whole Pantry’s success to charities and children with cancer, according to The Sydney Morning Herald. But in March of 2015, Gibson’s empire came crashing down after Australian journalists uncovered that she had been lying about it all — including her upbringing, her age, her charitable donations and, worst of all, her cancer diagnoses.

After being exposed as a fraud, Gibson attempted to wipe all traces of her lies from the internet. But now, the former social media sensation is in the spotlight once again, as the Netflix limited series Apple Cider Vinegar brings the story of her rise and fall to the small screen.

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

Here is everything to know about the real Belle Gibson and where the disgraced wellness influencer is today.

Who is Belle Gibson?

Gibson has claimed that she rose to fame, fortune and success following a troubled childhood where she was forced to take care of her mother and brother from a young age.

Born Oct. 8, 1991, Gibson grew up in Brisbane, Australia. She claimed her father was out of the picture, her mother suffered from multiple sclerosis and chronic fatigue, and her brother was autistic, according to Australia’s Women’s Weekly. Her brother denied these claims. Per Gibson’s account, the family responsibilities fell onto Gibson’s shoulders when she was as young as 5 years old,

“When I started school, my mum went, ‘My daughter is grown up now,’ ” Gibson told Women’s Weekly.

She continued, “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.”

Several of Gibson’s family members, including her late mother, Natalie Dal-Bello (who died from multiple sclerosis in 2017), her stepfather, Andrew Dal-Bello, and her brother, Nick Gibson, have refuted these claims, however. In 2015, Natalie referred to Gibson’s description of her childhood 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 an interview with Women’s Weekly. “I’ve practically worked myself into an early grave to give that girl everything she wanted in life.”

Andrew, however, did admit in the documentary Instagram’s Worst Con Artist, that Natalie “struggled” to parent Gibson and that the children experienced “tough times," per the Daily Mail. As a result, Gibson left home at around 13 years old and moved in with an “old man” who lived down the road, Andrew revealed.

In 2009, at the age of 17, Gibson dropped out of high school and moved to Perth, where she worked in a call center for a private health insurer. Around the same time, she first began to allege serious health issues, including that she suffered a stroke, underwent heart surgery and momentarily died on the operating table, and, ultimately, was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer and given four months to live.

What is Belle Gibson known for?

Gibson first gained acclaim in May 2013, when she launched her Instagram account @healing_belle. Her account documented how she had allegedly shunned chemotherapy and traditional medicine, and instead used a healthy diet and holistic treatments to cure her terminal brain cancer. Gibson’s remarkable story of natural healing attracted nearly 200,000 followers to her account.

The young, single mother (she gave birth to a son in 2011) quickly capitalized on her social media popularity. In August 2013, Gibson launched an app called The Whole Pantry — which touted the healthy recipes and holistic living tips that had reportedly cured her cancer. The app was an instant success: It was downloaded 200,000 times in its first month, per Elle, earning an estimated $1 million in revenue, and was named Apple’s Best Food and Drink App of 2013, Women’s Weekly reported.

The buzz around Gibson and The Whole Pantry continued into 2014. In September, Apple announced The Whole Pantry app would be one of the select few to be pre-installed on the brand new Apple Watch, and Gibson was flown out to Silicon Valley for its launch. The following month, the cookbook version of The Whole Pantry hit the shelves in Australia, with plans to publish in the U.S. and U.K. in 2015. Gibson closed out the year with Elle declaring her “the most inspiring woman you’ve met this year” and Cosmopolitan presenting her a “Fun, Fearless, Female” award.

But despite Gibson’s growing success, her health was reportedly suffering. The influencer revealed in a July 2014 Instagram post that her cancer had spread to her “blood, spleen, brain, uterus and liver."

What was Belle Gibson accused of?

Gibson’s fall from grace and the collapse of her wellness empire was even more rapid than her ascent to fame and fortune.

It began on March 8, 2015, when Australian newspaper The Age uncovered that Gibson had lied about making donations to multiple charities and individuals. According to the outlet, Gibson publicly claimed to have given away 25 percent of The Whole Pantry’s profits to various causes, as well as purporting she had donated as much as $300,000 to charitable organizations. Gibson also held two public fundraisers, one in December 2013 and another in May 2014, to raise money for five charities. The Age confirmed that none of the five charities had any record of receiving a donation from Gibson or The Whole Pantry.

Gibson blamed “cash flow” issues for the delay in donations.

“The intentions always were and still are to give back,” she told The Age. “The execution of this has obviously been flawed.”

But Gibson’s lies weren’t limited to her charitable donations: A second article from The Age, published two days later, called into question her name, age and cancer diagnoses. Close friends of Gibson’s, speaking publicly for the first time, revealed that they had doubts about her illnesses. Additionally, a leading Australian neurosurgeon, Professor Andrew Kaye, shared that Gibson’s claims about her cancer journey didn’t “add up.”

“I wouldn't believe any of this unless I saw the pathology report with my own eyes,” Kaye told The Age.

Gibson herself had trouble keeping her story straight. In her cookbook, which was published in October 2014, she wrote that her cancer had been “stable for two years now with no growth of the cancer.” Yet, in July 2014, she shared on social media that her cancer had spread to her blood, spleen, brain and uterus. The year prior, she told media outlets that cancer had also been found in her liver and kidneys.

What was Belle Gibson’s response to the allegations?

Gibson initially tried to cover her tracks by removing any social media traces of her illnesses. She deleted The Whole Pantry Facebook account, her Twitter account and removed thousands of photos from her personal and professional Instagram accounts. But, eventually, the disgraced influencer came clean about her dishonesty.

In two interviews, one with Women’s Weekly in April 2015 and another with Australia’s 60 Minutes in June, Gibson fessed up to her lies — but her versions of the truth 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.

But on 60 Minutes, Gibson changed her story yet again. This time, she said that she had been wrongfully diagnosed with cancer by a German alternative medical practitioner in 2009 — and did not discover she was healthy until 2011. She also avoided confirming 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.”

What was the fallout from Belle Gibson’s lies?

With the truth exposed, Gibson’s wellness empire crumbled — and fast. Within a week of the allegations surfacing, The Whole Pantry app was pulled from the App Store, her U.S. book launch for the cookbook had been canceled and Penguin had stripped The Whole Pantry from the shelves in Australia, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.

Additionally, in April 2015, Consumer Affairs Victoria launched an investigation into Gibson to determine if her actions constituted consumer fraud, The Guardian reported. The investigation eventually uncovered that Gibson had violated the Australian Consumer Law Act when she made false claims about having cancer and donating to charities, per ABC. She was fined $410,000.

“If there is one theme or pattern which emerges through her conduct, it is her relentless obsession with herself and what best serves her interests,” Justice Debra Mortimer said when handing down Gibson’s fine.

Where is Belle Gibson now?

Since her days of social media fame, Gibson has avoided the spotlight — and paying her fines to the Australian government.

Gibson was initially fined by Consumer Affairs Victoria in September 2017, but dodged making any payments throughout all of 2018. As a result, the Federal Court issued the former wellness influencer a warning that she would “be liable to imprisonment, sequestration of property or other punishment” if she didn’t pay up, per ABC.

The threat of jail time did not produce any payments by Gibson, however. She was called into court twice in 2019 for her failure to pay, where she claimed she was financially unable to pay her fines — despite spending more than $90,000 between 2017 and 2019 on clothes, cosmetics and travel, according to The Guardian. Her home has been raided on two separate occasions — in January 2020 and again in May 2021 — in an attempt to recoup the more than $500,000 in unpaid fines, interest and penalties. As of February 2021, the Federal Court has marked Gibson’s case as “abandoned,” according to Women’s Weekly.

Despite her two court appearances in 2019, Gibson has rarely been seen since her public downfall. In 2020, she was spotted in a social media video where claimed she had been adopted into Ethiopia's Oromo community in Melbourne, per ABC. In the video, Gibson donned a headscarf and referred to herself as Sabontu. However, the leader of the tribal group came forward to state Gibson was “not a community member,” The Australian reported.

Gibson has also reportedly separated from her longtime partner, Clive Rothwell, the Daily Mail reported in November 2023. Rothwell had been dating Gibson since at least 2012 and acted as a stepfather to her young son, Oliver. He stood by Gibson when her lies were exposed and continued to bankroll her lifestyle for years afterward — paying for her rent, utilities, legal fees and vacations, according to ABC. But that allegedly came to an end in November 2023, when Rothwell moved into a separate apartment from Gibson and was spotted with a new woman.

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