Sinister moment I realised my ‘cancer-stricken’ pal was Instagram’s worst con artist who preyed on dying victims
WATCHING her best friend Belle Gibson roll around on the floor having a seizure, Chanelle McAuliffe frantically shouted for someone to call an ambulance.
But before anyone had the chance to dial the emergency services, Belle miraculously recovered, wiping the saliva from her mouth and insisting she was fine.
It was the moment Chanelle, 36, from Melbourne, realised that Belle, 32, was conning millions of people into believing she had terminal cancer — and was making hundreds of thousands of pounds in the process.
In fact, Belle, a fit and healthy mum-of-one, had deviously created Australia’s most successful wellness account, claiming she’d developed a natural healing lifestyle plan that cured her of deadly brain cancer.
The influencer honed in on the fear and bewilderment of her followers, most of whom were genuinely battling terminal cancer, telling them to drink green juices and organic foods while wrongly suggesting Western medicine such as chemotherapy was not going to cure them.
Her Instagram account, Healing Belle, had more than 300,000 followers by the time she was eventually caught out.
The incredible story of the world’s most devious conwoman and how her fraudulent business was finally uncovered is being made into a Netflix series called Apple Cider Vinegar, which is currently being filmed in Melbourne.
In the meantime, the first episode in a two-part ITV documentary about the fraudster called Instagram’s Worst Con Artist starts tonight.
In an exclusive interview with Fab Daily, Chanelle says: “I’ve always been good at spotting red flags. My dad was a cop. Things just weren’t adding up.”
Recalling the moment she watched Belle shake off her seizure, she says: “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 account in 2013, revealing in her first post that four years earlier she had been diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer and given only four months to live.
Then 21, she told her followers that she had cured herself of the disease by eating natural, healthy foods and began sharing whole food recipes on the social media platform.
With each post came a wave of new followers from all over the globe.
Many of these were women fighting cancer and shunning much-needed medical intervention such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy to follow Belle’s advice.
They thought that as Belle had beaten stage four brain cancer with healthy food, they could too.
Within a year, her success saw her open a paid-for app called The Whole Pantry, a series of recipes that she encouraged others to use to beat sickness.
Thousands signed up and endorsement deals came flooding in.
By 2014, and with the app clocking up more than 300,000 downloads, she had an offer from tech giant Apple and a publishing deal with Penguin worth a reported £216,000.
As her brand grew, Belle won more hearts by saying the profits from her books and lavish fundraisers were going to cancer charities, hospitals and community projects.
It was in October 2014 that Chanelle met Belle through mutual friends and the pair hit it off instantly, with Chanelle inspired by Belle’s entrepreneurial spirit.
They quickly forged a close friendship, with Belle inviting Chanelle to Press events and to her home in the prosperous Melbourne suburb of Elwood.
But within just a few months, Chanelle became suspicious of her friend.
A few days after the seizure, Belle took to Instagram to tell her followers her cancer had spread.
Chanelle found it weird that she found out such serious news about her mate on social media.
Endorsement deals came flooding in
“I started to question everything, to go over it all in my mind,” she says.
“She 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.
“I said to Belle, ‘This is not good’. But she said, ‘I’m going to die soon anyway. Why not have some fun?’
“Those weren’t things she was sharing with her online community.
“Things just didn’t add up for me.”
Chanelle confided in a close friend that she was starting to doubt that Belle was telling the truth and the pal revealed he had been having his own doubts too.
So the pair drove to Belle’s house unannounced that evening to confront her.
Chanelle continues: “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.”
Chanelle adds: “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.
“I asked her if she was ready to come forward and she got really aggressive and told me to ‘f**k off’.”
Chanelle then made it her mission to unravel what Belle was doing and went to police, journalists and lawyers.
She says: “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.
“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.”
In early 2015, an Australian paper revealed that none of the charities Belle had claimed to donate to had ever received the money.
‘Her web of lies made my blood boil’
Instead, she’d spent it on a luxury car, an upmarket townhouse, designer clothes and cosmetic dental procedures.
Finally, in April that year, Belle admitted she had never had cancer, saying in an interview: “No, none of it’s true.”
Belle was fined £240,000 by the Federal Court in 2017 for lying about having cancer while promoting her Whole Pantry app and cookbook.
But she later appeared in court claiming she was unable to pay the fine.
She is now believed to owe more than £257,000 in fines, penalties and interest yet still lives in Melbourne as a free woman, keeping out of the spotlight.
Chanelle says: “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.”
- Instagram’s Worst Con Artist starts on ITV1 tonight at 9pm.