Where Is Belle Gibson Now? What We Know About the Subject of 'Apple Cider Vinegar'

Netflix's latest true-crime series Apple Cider Vinegar is the fictionalized story of Belle Gibson, an Australian woman who turned her faked cancer diagnosis into an Instagram wellness empire. In early 2010s Melbourne, Gibson built her business The Whole Pantry into an award-winning natural-eating app and cookbook, all off the claim that she was healing her terminal brain cancer with a holistic approach. In reality, she never had cancer, and once the news got out she was quickly dubbed one of the "most hated women in Australia."

Created by Samantha Strauss based on Beau Donelly and Nick Toscano's book The Woman Who Fooled the World, Apple Cider Vinegar dramatizes Gibson's (played by Kaitlyn Dever) rise and fall and examines its impact on pseudoscience, the dark side of the wellness industry and the early days of social media. Now that all six episodes are out, viewers may wonder what happened to Belle Gibson following the series' events. Read on for everything to know about Belle Gibson's life after Apple Cider Vinegar.

Why did Belle Gibson fake her cancer?

Belle Gibson was born in Tasmania, Australia, on October 8, 1991. She left her home in Brisbane at age 12 and lived with family friends, moving around until she relocated to Melbourne and welcomed a son in August 2009, at age 18. In May 2013, she revealed on social media that, though she had been diagnosed with a "malignant brain tumor" four years prior and only given months to live, she had been treating her illness with natural eating and alternative medicine. Her Instagram account soon grew to over 200,000 followers, per the BBC.

That August, she launched the wellness recipe app The Whole Pantry, named Apple's Best Food and Drink App of 2013, which was later selected to be pre-installed on the forthcoming Apple Watch. Penguin published an accompanying cookbook in October 2014. According to Vanity Fair, her wellness company helped her "bank over half a million Australian dollars in two years."

In March 2015, Donelly and Toscano wrote a Sydney Morning Herald article revealing that, although Gibson had claimed that she would donate "25 percent of her company's profits" to charity, at least five organizations had no record of receiving any money. The journalists' continued reporting, which grew to include Gibson's false cancer claims, led to a growing backlash, with Penguin and Apple dropping her soon after.

Apart from two interviews—one with 60 Minutes Australia and the other with The Australian Women's Weekly—Gibson has never spoken publicly on the scandal. In those interviews, the former influencer admitted that "none of it's true," and claimed that she was wrongfully diagnosed. She has never gone on record apologizing for her lies, so the world is left to wonder about her exact motivations.

As dramatized on Apple Cider Vinegar, some have theorized that Gibson lived with Munchausen syndrome or a different personality disorder, but Gibson has denied having serious psychological illnesses. In an episode of the excellent podcast Maintenance Phase about Gibson, host Michael Hobbes gave his take: "It's not this weird binary thing of did she believe it or lie? It's like, she believed a version of it, but she was also exaggerating even the version of it that she believed."

Speaking to Vanity Fair, Strauss says of the scammer, "She’s my absolutely favorite kind of protagonist to write because she’s so deeply flawed and problematic, but we can only speculate why."

Did Belle Gibson face any criminal charges?

Apple Cider Vinegar ends with a title card reading, "In 2017, the Federal Court of Australia found Belle Gibson guilty of mis"—before the fictional Gibson cuts in telling viewers to "Google it." Allow us to finish the sentence.

In September 2017, the Federal Court of Australia found Belle Gibson guilty of misleading consumers and "profiting from false claims she had cancer." She was ordered to pay $410,000 in total fines, with separate charges for each company she falsely promised donations, including one for duping the family of nine-year-old Joshua Schwarz, who had died earlier that year.

Justice Debbie Mortimer ordered that the money "should be donated to 'some or all' of the organizations and people Gibson had promised donations." Though Consumer Affairs Victoria sought for the sentence to include a mandatory public apology, that wasn't included in the sentence.

Gibson did not appear at any hearings during the four-month civil trial, nor did she send a lawyer to represent her. She finally appeared in court in May and June 2019, where she underwent questioning regarding her failure to pay the fines. Though a financial analysis found she had spent about $91,000 since the fines were ordered, including on trips to Bali, Kenya, and Ethiopia, Gibson claimed that she was "not in a position to pay a $410,000 fine at this stage."

According to reports by the Sydney Herald Sun, as of Apple Cider Vinegar's release, Gibson has not paid a cent of the fines ordered.

What has Belle Gibson been up to since 'Apple Cider Vinegar'?

Gibson has mainly stayed out of the public eye since her downfall in 2015, though the public got a surprising update on the scammer in early 2020, via an Australia Broadcasting Corporation report titled, "Fraudster Belle Gibson says she has been 'adopted' by Melbourne's Ethiopian community."

In a video captured in October 2019, Gibson, now going under the name Sabontu, gives an interview following a political meeting for Ethiopia's Oromo community in Melbourne. After introducing herself in the Oromo language, Gibson says that her heart is "deeply embedded in the Oromo people," adding, "I feel blessed to be adopted by [the community]."

Gibson says in the video that she has been involved in the Oromo community for four years, after starting out as a volunteer. According to ABC, the community did not know Gibson's real identity until January 2020, when her home was raided by Victoria police in an attempt to recoup the money she owed, which had grown to over $500,000 in penalties and interest. (Her home was later raided a second time in May 2021.)

Speaking to Australia Women's Weekly in 2021, the head of Melbourne’s Ethiopian community, Dr Tarekegn Chimdi, said, "She is exploiting the good heart of the people in our community. People are not questioning when people are approaching them [whether] this is a good person. They did not know what evil she was carrying."

At the time of Apple Cider Vinegar's release, Gibson does not have an active social media presence, and her financial status is unknown. It is unknown whether she still resides with her longtime partner, Clive Rothwell. In February 2024, a reporter from Channel 9's A Current Affair approached her at a petrol station. When asked why she hasn't "paid a cent" of her fines, she answered, "Have some humanity. I haven't paid things because I can't afford to."