Apple Cider Vinegar: Where is the real Belle Gibson now?
The Cosmopolitan
Her story is being told in the Netflix drama
By Lydia VennPublished: 06 February 2025
preview for Apple Cider Vinegar | Official Trailer | Netflix
10 years after she admitted "none of it was true" Belle Gibson's story is now being retold and dramatised in Netflix's newest drama series Apple Cider Vinegar.
The six-part series sees Kaitlyn Dever play the Australian influencer who convinced the world she had cured her brain cancer from a healthy diet, going onto sell her recipes in an app The Whole Pantry and recipe book, all the while amassing thousands of followers on social media. She also claimed to have donated to multiple charities and one family.
Throughout the series we see Belle's attempt to grow her fame and business, before her eventual downfall and the admission of her lies.
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Kaitlyn Dever as Belle Gibson in Apple Cider Vinegar
So where is the real Belle Gibson now? Here's what you need to know.
Where is Belle Gibson now?
In 2015, two years after she burst onto the wellness scene, media and people online began to ask questions about the sincerity of her cancer and charity claims.
The Age reporters Beau Donelly and Nick Toscano had contacted the charities Belle had claimed to have donated to, and discovered that she had given anything to them. Shortly after this, in March 2015 it was reported Belle had then donated $1,000 to organisation One Girl. Belle then confessed to The Weekly, none of her cancer claims were true.
In 2017 Belle faced a fine of more than $1million after a federal judge in Victoria, Australia found Gibson to have been "misleading" and "deceptive" in her claims of being able to cure cancer via natural remedies.
Justice Debra Mortimer said at the time: "Ms Gibson had no reasonable basis to believe she had cancer from the time she began making these claims in public to promote The Whole Pantry Book and the apps in mid-2013."
Her actual fine was reduced to $410,000 Australian dollars (or £240,000). However, two years later and she still hadn't paid the fine and so she was order to face trial or go to jail.
She attended a trial that year and this was the last time she spoke publicly on the matter. She was reported to have said it was "sad" that journalists were covering the trial at the time.
A few months later Belle appeared to have reinvented herself and had joined the Oromo community in Melbourne, who are originally from Ethiopia. It was revealed she now wanted to be known as "Sabontu".
Dr Tarekegn Chimdi, the head of Melbourne’s Ethiopian community, said at the time he thought she was someone's girlfriend in the group. However, reporters then told him Gibson's history and he asked her to leave the group.
"It was concerning when someone is using the community’s name who is not a member of that community. She was coming across as more Oromo than Oromo people," he said.
According to reports, her home has been raided twice since her 2019 trial in an attempt to recoup the money she owes.
Belle is currently not on any form of social media.
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