Belle Gibson Built Her Net Worth on a Web of Lies That Could Have Killed People

In June 2015, Belle Gibson agreed to appear on 60 Minutes Australia where she addressed the fact that she never had cancer. As with all con artists, the situation was complicated. Two months before the on-camera sit-down, Gibson revealed in an interview with Australian Women's Weekly (as reported by The Guardian), that everything was a lie. "I don’t want forgiveness," she said. "I just think [speaking out] was the responsible thing to do."

Gibson changed her tune while chatting with Tara Brown for 60 Minutes, stating that she was actually the victim in this scenario. The wellness influencer insisted that her doctors lied to her, and finding out the truth was traumatizing. The whole situation was an exercise in grifting. She did get one thing right. Her entire empire crumbled after her lies were uncovered. What is her net worth? Here's what we know.

Gibson's net worth is unclear, but what we do know is she has been ordered to pay $410,000 to the state of Victoria, by the federal court in Melbourne, Australia. Due to the fact that she has yet to pay any of that, Gibson owes more than $500,000. Her lies can be traced back to 2009 when she first claimed to have inoperable brain cancer.

Four years later, Gibson amassed quite a following on social media and informed her 300,000 fans that she had cured her cancer via a gluten- and sugar-free diet. This led to Gibson dreaming up The Whole Pantry, which was both an app and cookbook devoted to the same healthy diet that she allegedly used to rid her body of cancer. In its first month, the app was downloaded by 200,000 people, which would have earned Gibson more than $1 million.

In December 2014, Elle Australia did a feature on Gibson where they crowned her "The Most Inspiring Woman You’ve Met This Year." After this piece was published, the magazine received an anonymous email about Gibson. This person wrote that Gibson is a "compulsive liar" who "got so tangled in her own web of lies living in Brisbane, she moved to Melbourne to start a new life of lies – 'the cancer lie' this time."

The author of the email went on to say that they also knew Gibson's mother, and never heard anything about the young woman having cancer. She was always prone to lies which is bad enough. The real problem with this story was that she was convincing other people who were actually sick that they could be cured simply by changing their diets. They then asked the most important question of all: Where is the proof? The magazine chose to ignore the email, but less than 24 hours later, things blew up.

In March 2015, The Sydney Morning Herald reported that charity money promised by Gibson never made its way to the intended organization. A month later, Gibson was admitting that the whole thing was a lie but again, she wasn't the liar. The wellness influencer insisted that she was misdiagnosed by her doctor. That's when she was hauled into court and issued a fine she never paid.