Belle Gibson became known as Instagram’s most notorious con artist after fooling thousands of vulnerable people with her cruel lies – and this is the moment her best friend realised
A woman has revealed the moment she realised her best friend had been conning thousands of vulnerable people by pretending to be seriously ill.
Chanelle McAuliffe, from Melbourne, recalled the moment she watched Belle Gibson fall to the ground in a violent seizure, and had screamed for someone to call an ambulance. But no sooner had she been convulsing on the floor than Belle miraculously came around, sat up and told onlookers that she was fine – there was apparently no need for her to receive medical attention.
This, Chanelle claimed, is the moment that the ball dropped and she realised for the first time that Belle had been lying to her. Her best friend had been faking a fatal illness for years and lying to gain attention and sympathy. But this wasn’t the worst part. Belle had in fact been fooling millions of unsuspecting people on social media, conning them into donating money and even putting the lives of people with real serious conditions at risk.
Belle was a healthy mum of one who had built hundreds of thousands of followers on Instagram documenting her journey battling a terminal brain tumour. She had claimed online that she had manage to fight the cancer and prolong her life by shunning conventional Western medical treatments such as chemotherapy and instead leading a natural healing lifestyle. Except she never really had cancer.
In an exclusive interview with Fab Daily, Chanelle explained the moments after the seizure when she finally realised the lies: “I’ve always been good at spotting red flags. My dad was a cop. Things just weren’t adding up. I felt really sick in my stomach for what I had just seen. This is the point where red flags really started to pop up for me.”
Belle set up her Instagram account in 2013, building up over 300,000 followers (many of whom had real terminal cancer diagnoses) and encouraging them to drink green juices and eat organic foods as a way to reverse their disease. The then 21-year-old told millions that she had inoperable brain cancer and had been given only four months to live but by using these methods, defied all odds and beat the disease.
A documentary called Instagram’s Worst Con Artist on ITV details how the influencer eventually used her success to build a paid wellness app dubbed ‘Whole Pantry’ where she shared recipes for fans wanting to follow her lifestyle. The app gained huge success, earning her hundreds of thousands in sales and brand deals, entering a partnership with tech giant Apple and signing a cook book deal with publisher Penguin worth nearly £220,000.
Chanelle explained that she initially met Belle through mutual friends and their friendship has blossomed, but as time went on, her suspicions grew. She said: “I started to question everything, to go over it all in my mind. Belle always looked so well, she never looked sick. I started to think about times where she had gone on tanning beds and another time when we went to a nightclub and she was ordering shots and drinks.
Chanelle claims that at the time, she brought up Belle’s behaviour but her retorts would always be something along this lines of: ‘I’m going to die soon anyway. Why not have some fun?’. Eventually Chanelle’s doubts got the better of her and days after the seizure event, she confided in another close friend who, to her surprise, also revealed she was questioning the truth behind Belle’s claims. It was then that a five year campaign to end her scam began.
She recounted how the pair decided to confront Belle the very same day, turning up at her front door unannounced and demanding answers. Chanelle said: “She looked bewildered and I asked her to go get some medical documents or scans – any type of medical evidence – that she would have in her house.
“She claimed she didn’t hold on to anything like that at home because it ‘had negative energy’, so I asked her which hospital she went to get diagnosed at and she said she hadn’t been, that a doctor came to her house. She was defensive. But the more she spoke, the more it became clear it was all a lie. I asked her if she was ready to come forward and she got really aggressive and told me to ‘f**k off’.”
Chanelle’s plan to expose Belle’s horrible lies proved more difficult than she thought as no one was willing believe her with no evidence to prove her case. She said: “With no proof, nobody would believe me. A lawyer accused me of defaming her. I couldn’t sleep. I knew someone was out there doing harm though, so I couldn’t stop.
She continued: “For six months to a year I was fighting to get her lies exposed. I spoke to lawyers and that cost me money. I spent hours co-working with journalists. I was just so hell-bent on stopping her. She was profiting from a web of lies she was spinning by targeting vulnerable people and it just made my blood boil. She was misleading people on such a major level. They were choosing to eat fruit and veg over medical treatment.”
It was only in 2015, when an Australian newspaper revealed that none of the charities that Belle has claimed to donate to using profits from her ventures had actually received any money, that the wider public were alerted to her lies. The money had instead gone to luxuries for Belle, including a brand new car, designer clothes and expensive cosmetic dental work.
In April of the same year, Belle confessed to her scams in an interview, saying: “No, none of it’s true.” She was fined £240,000 by the Federal Court in 2017 but later appeared in court claiming she didn’t have the fund to pay the fine. She is still currently believed to be in debt of more than £257,000 in fines, penalties and interest. She is a free woman and still resides in Melbourne.
Chanelle said: “I feel for Belle’s victims, the cancer survivors who have never seen any justice . . . and the charities that were ripped off. She will always be a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
A new documentary about the ordeal, Apple Cider, is currently being filmed for Netflix.
