Infamous cancer fraudster Belle Gibson has erupted at a television reporter in a fiery exchange at a petrol station after being confronted over unpaid fines she claims she can’t afford to pay.
Gibson was fined $410,000 by the Federal Court in 2017 for lying about having cancer while promoting her Whole Pantry app and cookbook.
She claimed to have cured her terminal brain cancer with a healthy diet and encouraged others to swap conventional medicine for natural remedies.
Six years on, it’s understood the fine is yet to be paid due to massive personal debts, which may have spiralled to more than $500,000 with interest.
Gibson was filling up her Subaru Forester at a petrol station in Melbourne’s northern suburbs when she was ambushed by A Current Affair, which aired the segment on Monday night.
Channel Nine reporter Sam Cucchiara repeatedly asked Gibson about the outstanding fine, the reasons why it hadn’t yet been paid, and whether she had a message or apology for those she had defrauded.
Cancer fraudster Belle Gibson unleashed on a reporter who asked when she planned to repay debts believed to have ballooned to $500,000 since 2017
‘Is it time to pay the fine, Belle?’ Cucchiara asked.
Gibson, who was wearing a Nike sweatshirt, a long black skirt and large sunglasses, claimed they ‘knew’ she couldn’t afford to pay her debts as she pleaded for ‘humanity’.
‘I haven’t paid things because I can’t afford to,’ the former wellness warrior hit back.
‘I can’t get into the workplace.’
She attempted to walk away from the reporter, before announcing, ‘That’s it.’
‘I’m just here to get petrol,’ Gibson raged.
‘I don’t appreciate you following me with my son. If you want to ask questions you’ve got my phone number, you’ve got my email, that’s it.’
She also pleaded for Cucchiara to meet with her privately.
It’s the first time Ms Gibson has spoken publicly since her infamous tell-all interview with 60 Minutes in 2015.
Cucchiara asked Gibson if she would like to apologise to the people who had believed her natural remedies would cure their cancer.
‘Is it time to apologise to these people, Belle? It’s been a long time. Surely they deserve some sort of apology from you?’ he asked.
Gibson chose to remain silent as she continued to pump petrol into her car before walking inside.
Gibson (pictured in 2021) was fined more than $400,000 in 2017 after her cancer hoax came undone, a fine which is yet to be paid because of her massive personal debts
Belle Johnston reached out to Gibson in desperation after she was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer at about the same age as the fraudster.
Despite being broke at the time, she purchased Gibson’s book in the hopes her natural remedies would cure her disease.
Ms Johnston slammed Gibson’s refusal to pay up and renewed calls for a personal apology.
‘Offering hope to people who are literally dying is just so cruel,’ she said.
‘I think on one side [Gibson] is a manipulative, horrible person, but on the other side of it there’s something so fundamentally sad about her as well that I just pity it.
‘I’d like an apology at the bare minimum.’
Lawyer Justin Lawrence from firm Henderson and Ball said the way Gibson was appearing to avoid punishment made it even harder for her victims.
‘If she’s not bankrupt then at the very least bankruptcy is something that can be pursued to really make a statement as much as anything that the community won’t tolerate this,’ he said.
‘If she had gone into a bank account and taken the money out and been charged with theft then she would be in jail.’
Gibson (pictured outside Melbourne’s Federal Court) gained international fame after she falsely claimed to have cured her terminal brain with natural remedies
Aside from briefly joining and raising money for an Ethiopian diaspora group in 2018, Gibson has managed to keep out of the spotlight in recent years.
Before she was ousted, Gibson boasted about how her healthy diet had cured her terminal cancer, claiming she ‘gave up on conventional treatment when it was making my cancer more aggressive and started treating myself naturally’.
She also claimed to have helped others down the same path of unproven and unconventional treatment ‘countless times… for everything from fertility, depression, bone damage and other types of cancer’.
The Whole Pantry was downloaded over 200,000 times in its first month, leading to it being voted Apple’s Best Food and Drink App of 2013. It was a pre-loaded app on the Apple Watch at launch and secured Gibson a book deal.
The scam made $440,000 in three years, according to a 2017 Federal Court case.
Despite the lucrative business and awards, Gibson was all but destitute by the time the case was determined.
A letter exclusively obtained by Daily Mail Australia from her to Victoria’s Justice Department at the time stated she had just $5,000 to her name and was drowning under the weight of $170,000 in personal debts.
Gibson explained she was indebted to BMW Finance for over $50,000, had maxed out an ANZ credit card for $30,000 and owed more than $90,000 in ‘another personal debt… all of which I can not pay’.
‘Consequently, I am not able to pay the amounts ordered by Justice Mortimer (the Federal Court judge presiding over her case)’, her letter read.
She concluded the letter, dated November 14, 2017, by asking the government to approach her accountant directly in the future, ‘given my current health’.
Aside from briefly joining and raising money for an Ethiopian diaspora group in 2018, Gibson (pictured in 2014) has managed to keep out of the spotlight in recent years.
Gibson’s rented white-picketed home in Melbourne’s northern suburbs was twice raided by the sheriff in 2020 and 2021 in an attempt to recoup her unpaid fines.
On the day of the 2020 raid, footage surfaced of Gibson wearing a headscarf and going by the moniker ‘Sanbontu’ in a Melbourne Ethiopian community.
She told a reporter from an African news outlet that she had been adopted by the community after volunteering with them for more than four years.
This claim was rebuked just hours later by the Australian Oromo Community Association in Victoria’s president, Tarekegn Chimdi.
Mr Chimidi said Gibson was ‘not a community member and she’s also not working with the community’, claiming she had only been seen at events a handful of times.
Belle Gibson’s fake cancer saga: How it happened
Police have twice raided her white-picketed rental home in Melbourne’s north to ‘recoup’ some of her unpaid fines
October 1991: Belle Gibson is born
May 2009: Gibson claims to have undergone multiple operations on her heart and also momentarily died on the operating table
July 2009: Gibson claims that a doctor diagnosed her with terminal brain cancer and that she only had four months to live
Early 2013: She launches an Instagram account (@healing_belle) and accompanying website sharing healthy, wholefood recipes
Mid 2013: Gibson releases an app of her recipes called Whole Food Pantry
Mid-2014: Gibson begins working with Apple on the development of an Apple Watch-specific platform for the app
November 2014: Cosmopolitan honours Gibson with a Fun, Fearless, Female award in the social media category
March 2015: The Age newspaper releases an investigation into Gibson’s claims of donating proceeds to charity
April 2015: Women’s Weekly publishes an interview with Gibson, where she admits that she never had brain cancer: ‘None of it’s true’
May 2015: Victoria’s consumer watchdog launches legal proceedings against Gibson’s false claims of defeating cancer by way of a wholefood diet
June 2015: Gibson gives a TV interview with 60 Minutes, where she claims that she’s ‘not trying to get away with anything’
March 2017: A Federal Court Judge describes Gibson as having a ‘relentless obsession with herself and what serves her best interests’
September 2017: Gibson is fined $410,000 by the Federal Court for her false claims of charitable donations
June 2019: Almost two years after she was ordered to pay the fine, Gibson tells the court: ‘I’m not in a position to pay a $410,000 fine at this stage’
December 2019: Consumer Affairs Victoria quietly issues a warrant ‘of seizure or sale’ against Gibson
January 22, 2020: Sheriff executes a ‘seize and sell’ warrant on Gibson’s Northcote home, following inquiries from Daily Mail Australia
January 23, 2020: Daily Mail Australia reveals she has been ‘adopted’ by an Ethiopian group called the Oromo
May 2021: Authorities raid Gibson’s Northcote home to recoup over $500,000 in ‘fines, penalties and interest’
August 2021: She is disowned by the Oromo community in Melbourne
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