Belle Gibson snaps: Notorious cancer faker’s furious reaction as she’s confronted for the first time in years

Notorious cancer fraudster Belle Gibson has attacked a television reporter during a heated altercation at a petrol station after she was confronted with unpaid fines that she says she cannot afford.

Gibson was fined $410,000 by the Federal Court in 2017 for lying about cancer while promoting her Whole Pantry app and cookbook.

She claimed to have cured her terminal brain cancer with a healthy diet and encouraged others to swap conventional methods for natural remedies.

Six years later, it becomes clear that the fine has yet to be paid due to enormous personal debts, which with interest may have risen to more than $500,000.

Gibson was filling up her Subaru Forester at a petrol station in Melbourne’s northern suburbs when she was ambushed by A Current Affair, which aired the segment on Monday night.

Channel Nine reporter Sam Cucchiara repeatedly asked Gibson about the outstanding fine, the reasons why it had not yet been paid and whether she had a message or apology for those she had defrauded.

“Is it time to pay the fine Belle?” Cucchiara asked.

Gibson, who wore a Nike sweatshirt, a long black skirt and large sunglasses, claimed she “knew” she couldn’t pay her debts as she advocated for humanity.

“I haven’t paid anything because I can’t afford it,” the former welfare campaigner responded.

‘I cannot enter the workplace.’

She tried to walk away from the reporter before announcing “that’s it.”

“I’m just here to get gas,” Gibson raged.

“I don’t appreciate you following me with my son. If you want to ask questions, you have my phone number, you have my email address, that’s it.’

She also begged Cucchiara to meet her privately.

It is the first time Ms. Gibson has spoken publicly since her infamous tell-all interview with 60 Minutes in 2015.

Cucchiara asked Gibson if she would apologize to the people who believed her natural remedies would cure their cancer.

“Is it time to apologize to these people Belle?” It’s a long time ago. Surely they deserve an apology from you?’ he asked.

Gibson chose to remain silent as she continued to pump gas into her car before walking inside.

Belle Johnston contacted Gibson in desperation after she was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer at around the same age as the fraudster.

Despite being broke at the time, she bought Gibson’s book in the hope that her natural remedies would cure her illness.

Ms Johnston criticized Gibson’s refusal to pay and renewed calls for a personal apology.

“Providing hope to people who are literally dying is so cruel,” she said.

“I think on the one hand (Belle Gibson) is a manipulative, horrible person, but on the other hand, there’s also something so fundamentally sad about her that I just feel sorry for her.”

‘I would at least like an apology.

Lawyer Justin Lawrence of the firm Henderson and Ball said the way Gibson appeared to avoid punishment made it even harder for her victims.

“If not bankrupt, then bankruptcy is at least something that can be pursued to really make a statement, just like anything that the community won’t tolerate,” he said.

“If she had gone into a bank account and taken the money out and been charged with theft, she would be in jail.”

Besides briefly joining and raising money for an Ethiopian diaspora group in 2018, Gibson has managed to stay out of the spotlight in recent years.

Before she was ousted, Gibson boasted about how her healthy diet had cured her terminal cancer, claiming that she “gave up conventional treatment when it made my cancer more aggressive and started treating myself naturally.”

She also claimed to have helped others down the same path of unproven and unconventional treatments “countless times… for everything from fertility, depression, bone damage and other types of cancer.”

The Whole Pantry was downloaded more than 200,000 times in its first month, making it Apple’s best food and drink app of 2013. It was a preloaded app on the Apple Watch at launch and landed Gibson a book deal.

According to a 2017 federal court case, the scam made $440,000 in three years.

Despite the lucrative business and awards, Gibson was virtually penniless by the time the case was decided.

A letter exclusively obtained from her to Victoria’s Department of Justice at the time said she had just $5,000 to her name and was drowning under the weight of $170,000 in personal debt.

Gibson explained that she owed more than $50,000 to BMW Finance, had maxed out an ANZ credit card for $30,000 and owed more than $90,000 in “another personal debt… all of which I can’t pay.”

“As a result, I am unable to pay the amounts ordered by Judge Mortimer (the Federal Court judge presiding over her case),” her letter said.

She concluded the letter, dated November 14, 2017, with a request for the government to contact her accountant directly in the future, ‘given my current health’.

Gibson’s rented white-picket home in Melbourne’s northern suburbs was raided twice by the sheriff in 2020 and 2021 in an attempt to recover her unpaid fines.

On the day of the raid in 2020, images emerged of Gibson wearing a headscarf and nicknamed ‘Sanbontu’ in an Ethiopian community in Melbourne.

She told a reporter from an African news channel that she had been adopted by the community after volunteering with them for more than four years.

This claim was dismissed just hours later by the Australian Oromo Community Association in Victoria’s president, Tarekegn Chimdi.

Mr Chimidi said Gibson was ‘not a member of the community nor does she work with the community’, claiming she had only been seen a handful of times at events.