Episode 2838
Belle Gibson
Sat, 2025-Feb-08 01:29 UTC
Length - 3:13
Direct Link
Welcome to Popular Wiki of the Day, spotlighting Wikipedia's most visited pages, giving you a peek into what the world is curious about today.
With 298,711 views on Friday, 7 February 2025 our article of the day is Belle Gibson.
Annabelle Natalie Gibson (born 8 October 1991) is an Australian convicted scammer and pseudoscience advocate. She is the author of The Whole Pantry mobile app and its later companion cookbook. Throughout her career as a wellness guru, Gibson falsely claimed to have been diagnosed with multiple cancer pathologies, including malignant brain cancer, and that she was effectively managing them through diet, exercise, natural medicine, and alternative medicine therapies. She additionally claimed that she had donated significant proportions of her income and her company's profits to numerous charities.
In February 2015 Gibson's close friend Chanelle McAuliffe confronted Gibson with suspicions about her cancer claims, and perpetrating a scam, and urged Gibson to come forward with the truth; Gibson refused. Concerned about the harm Gibson was causing to people with cancer, McAuliffe reported Gibson to the police, a lawyer and an investigative journalist; they were not willing to look into the case. Finally, journalists at The Age recognised McAuliffe as a legitimate whistleblower and broke the first story of Gibson's fraud. In March 2015, after reports identified Gibson's fraudulent claims regarding her charitable donations, media investigation found that she had also fabricated her stories of cancer, and lied about her age, personal life and history. Concerns were expressed that Gibson had led a profligate lifestyle, renting an upmarket town house, leasing a luxury car and office space, undergoing cosmetic dental procedures, purchasing designer clothes and holidaying internationally, using money claimed to have been raised for charity. With a collapsing social media support base, Gibson admitted in an April 2015 interview that her claims of having multiple cancers had been fabricated, stating that "none of it's true".
Her actions were described as "particularly predatory", as well as "deceit on a grand scale, for personal profit". On 6 May 2016, Consumer Affairs Victoria announced legal action against Gibson and Inkerman Road Nominees Pty Ltd (originally known as Belle Gibson Pty Ltd) for "false claims by Ms. Gibson and her company concerning her diagnosis with terminal brain cancer, her rejection of conventional cancer treatments in favour of natural remedies, and the donation of proceeds to various charities." On 15 March 2017, the Federal Court of Australia supported most of those claims, concluding that "Ms. Gibson had no reasonable basis to believe she had cancer."
This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 01:29 UTC on Saturday, 8 February 2025.
For the full current version of the article, see Belle Gibson on Wikipedia.
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Until next time, I'm neural Kevin.
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