Bail was arranged and he was out within one week of being put behind bars. He immediately went on the run, failing to appear at his subsequent arraignment. A warrant was issued for his arrest.
While in hiding, The Fox was talking to Gamble every day. He wanted the charges dropped and to return home to England. Gamble cut a settlement deal with The Fox through a court in Hong Kong — The Fox handed over the money and the charges were dropped.
‘We cleaned him out,’ said Gamble. ‘My client got his money back and The Fox got an undertaking that I would not name him.’
The Fox kept in contact with Gamble, and eventually figured out that Luke was the one who had dobbed him in. ‘Luke was later arrested in Switzerland over another Fox-related scam and is now doing time in a Philadelphia jail,’ Gamble said.
But The Fox is still out there. Gamble had to wrestle with his conscience — get his client’s money back or lock up The Fox? His client is happy, but Gamble lost his arrest. The Fox occasionally helps him with information. Gamble takes that, and patiently watches. No matter which case he is on or what country he is in, he keeps a weather eye on The Fox. He is the one who walked away, and that does not sit well at all.
Quackers: Health fraudsters
‘I have a three-year-old and I have cancer. I only have time to do what feels really good. Having a child, or amazing friends, or a partner, or a boyfriend is also phenomenal. Don’t waste your time on anything that doesn’t feel good and nurturing.’ This was 25-year-old Australian Belle Gibson talking to America’s Visual Therapy website in July 2014. She was in the US to be honoured at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference after her app, The Whole Pantry, was selected to be preloaded on all iPads and installed on the new Apple smartwatch. The website told its readers to ‘be inspired’.
In 2013, Gibson became a sensation when she announced on social media that she had a malignant brain cancer and had been healing herself with alternative therapies and healthy living. She quickly attracted more than 200,000 followers on Instagram and her popularity soared as TV shows and women’s magazines lapped up every detail of her amazing journey. She ticked every box – young, pretty, courageous and a walking, talking miracle to boot.
‘What made you choose the path of leading a healthy life and was there a particular turning point?’ asked an interviewer for the blog Fitness in the City in September 2013. Gibson’s answer was truly moving: ‘A few years ago, I was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. The turning point wasn’t necessarily the cancer, but more of a “if this is it, I want it to be the best time of my life”. Illness of any kind is exhausting and debilitating, but there was a part of me that knew it didn’t need to be like that. When I had that revelation, I took the leap to heal myself naturally and haven’t looked back. Every day is an attempt to have the best day ever, with constant nurturing and respect for my body and life.’
The young mother had the dazzled interviewer eating from the palm of her hand, just as she did with everyone she met. ‘It was love at first sight. Belle won me over straight away with her amazing images on Instagram, with food which promised not only to taste as good as it looked, but to also nourish the body with essential nutrients, vitamins and 100% goodness,’ the interviewer gushed.
Giant publishing house Penguin jumped on the wellness bandwagon with a cookbook by Gibson, The Whole Pantry, which was slated for national release in October 2014. ‘Belle Gibson is an inspirational young mother who encourages us to nourish ourselves in a more natural and sustainable way. After being diagnosed with terminal brain cancer Belle found herself unsupported by conventional medicine. She began a journey of self-education to treat herself through nutrition. Her award-winning app, The Whole Pantry, is a phenomenal resource of recipes, wellness guides and personal support, and has inspired hundreds of thousands of people to change their diet and lifestyle,’ ran the blurb for the book.
Gibson’s story was uplifting. Anyone who met her, read about her, downloaded her app or tried her recipes could not fail to come away hopeful for the future. Her story was so good that for nearly two years nobody thought or bothered to check and see if it was actually true. Not the journalists and bloggers who interviewed her, the Apple execs who lauded her, the Cosmopolitan judges who awarded her the magazine’s Fun Fearless Female Award in its social media category, or the publishing house that rushed to sign her up and pump out her cookbook. But eventually, in March 2015, Belle Gibson’s idyllic world started to unravel.
There had been signs. In July 2014, she had told her Instagram followers that the cancer had spread. ‘With frustration and ache in my heart … it hurts me to find space tonight to let you all know with love and strength that I’ve been diagnosed with a third and fourth cancer.’ She later added: ‘One is secondary and the other is primary. I have cancer in my blood, spleen, brain, uterus and liver. I am hurting.’
Yet she remained the epitome of the tall, blonde, healthy Aussie girl. Surely at some stage all these cancers had to take a physical toll? Her friends started to doubt her. According to Gibson, she had been diagnosed with the spreading cancer by a doctor called Phil. At the end of 2014, two of her friends confronted her and said that perhaps what Dr Phil had told her might not be true. They asked if she had ever had cancer at all.
Of course she had, she said. Why, she was first diagnosed in 2009 at the age of twenty by Dr Mark Johns, an immunologist and neurologist from the prestigious Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne. She went to his home, where she sat on ‘a machine like an old fashioned hard drive with lights and metal sheets’. He diagnosed her with brain cancer and gave her just four months to live. Unfortunately, checks done long after Gibson shot to fame showed no record of a Dr Johns at the Peter MacCallum Centre; indeed, there were no records that a Dr Mark Johns ever existed.
Once the doubts began, they started to grow. In March 2015, The Age newspaper in her home town of Melbourne published a report saying that she had not handed over the $300,000 profits from her book to charity as she promised. This prompted The Australian to start digging. It found a series of gaping holes in her story. It checked her claims against her business records, and found that she would have been seventeen rather than twenty when she was first diagnosed with the terminal cancer. It was a small lie, but from that the whole charade began to fall apart.
The Australian found a blog post she wrote on a Perth skateboarders’ forum in 2009, where she claimed she was going in to hospital to have fluid removed from around her heart. ‘I just woke up out of a coma type thing, and had no idea what was going on … the doctor comes in and tells me the draining failed and I went into cardiac arrest and died for just under three minutes,’ she wrote. Was that true?
And did she really have an allergic reaction to the Gardasil cervical cancer vaccine that caused her to suffer a stroke at work in 2009?
And did she really have a miscarriage with partner Clive Rothwell in 2012?
Fronted with the truth that these were all fictions, Gibson tearfully told reporter Richard Guilliatt, ‘It’s hard to admit that maybe you were wrong,’ and added that she was ‘confused, bordering on humiliated’.
But she also was quick to point out that it wasn’t her fault. She had in fact been misdiagnosed by a medical team from Germany who had found the cancer using ‘magnetic’ therapy. Once again, she refused to name any of her doctors, only saying: ‘I’m still going through understanding what’s happening with my body.’ As the world she had created began to collapse, Gibson recast herself as the victim of dodgy doctors and asked for sympathy again.
To clear the air, she gave two unpaid interviews to the Australian Women’s Weekly. The resulting article was published in May 2015. ‘I am still jumping between what I think I know and what is reality,’ she said. ‘I have lived it and I’m not really there yet.’
So did she have cancer?
‘No … None of it’s true,’ she said.
And how did she feel now?
‘It’s just very scary, to be honest,’ she to
ld the magazine. ‘Because you start to doubt the crux of things that make up who you are. You know, I’m blonde and I’m tall, and I’ve got hazel eyes and I’ve got cancer. And all of a sudden, you take away some of those high-level things and it’s really daunting.’
Well, actually, you take away just one of those things — the one that isn’t true.
So why lie in the first place?
‘I think my life has just got so many complexities around it and within it, that it’s just easier to assume [I’m lying],’ she said. ‘If I don’t have an answer, then I will sort of theorise it myself and come up with one. I think that’s an easy thing to often revert to if you don’t know what the answer is.’
In truth, Penguin had had some doubts before the cookbook was released. An internal media-training video from the publisher was made public as part of Consumer Affairs Victoria’s case against Gibson. In it, two Penguin publicists quiz Gibson about her self-healing claims. As the publicists put her through her paces, the holes in her story become increasingly clear. On the video, the publicists tell her it is a vital part of the preparation to help deal with questions from pesky journalists. ‘Because what we suspect might happen now, is that because you are the success story of the moment … you know what journalists do, they want to start scratch, scratch, scratching away,’ said the publicist. Gibson points out that the journalists are already sniffing around. ‘Exactly. And we’re concerned about that,’ said the publicist.
When asked about her radical alternative treatment, Gibson gives a long-winded, rambling answer that leaves the publicists bewildered. They suggest she does some research on the treatment and come up with a single-line response to questions. ‘You can say you’re following a non-conventional European cancer protocol,’ said one. ‘You can certainly do that.’ They also tell her that she needs to get her ‘story straight’ on the charities. But, despite their obvious concerns, Penguin went ahead with the publication of the book — a decision that cost the publisher a $30,000 fine from Consumer Affairs Victoria and a lot of credibility. It also had to promise to put prominent warning notices on the front of any future books that contained natural therapies.
But just in case anyone is in any doubt who is really to blame here, Belle has made it very clear: her mother. She had been sick, suffering from multiple sclerosis, while Belle was growing up, so Belle had had a terrible childhood: she had to make all the medical appointments, care for her autistic brother, do all the shopping, clean the house, and all when she was just five years old. ‘I didn’t have toys,’ she said. She didn’t have to sweep out chimneys as they did in Dickens’s day, but that’s about the only thing the poor lamb did not have to go through.
Gibson’s tearful interview with the Australian Women’s Weekly left reporter Clair Weaver feeling frustrated at the shifting sands of Belle’s story. In her article, she wrote, ‘One of the most troubling aspects of Belle’s response is that she appears to have little empathy. When Belle cries, her tears appear to be mostly for herself.’ She also speculated that Gibson could have a psychological disorder, such as Munchausen syndrome or factitious disorder, where people feign illness often for attention. Experts on these disorders say that sufferers often have an underlying mental disorder, such as borderline personality disorder, where they lie compulsively because they see themselves as superior and at the same time are desperate to be adored by other people. Belle might have blown that one.
‘I don’t want forgiveness,’ said Belle. ‘I would like people to say, “Okay, she’s human. She’s obviously had a big life. She’s respectfully come to the table and said what she’s needed to say and now it’s time to grow and heal.”’ She understood there might be confusion and suspicion, but what she wanted was for people to treat her with respect, particularly after she spent so much time working to raise an online community. But people who have had their trust betrayed are not that easily pacified. Her followers were furious and not afraid to vent their feelings publicly.
Perth university student Ashton Taylor posted a letter to Belle online, explaining how she felt ‘ashamed’ for buying The Whole Pantry app. ‘I want you to know that I am angry with you,’ it began. ‘As a patient who has gone through 15 brain surgeries, numerous angiograms, hundreds of blood tests and many MRI scans, how dare you make money by lying about a hardship that many Australians like myself have to go through every single day? … How idiotic I feel right now for believing you. I am someone who believed in your lies. Someone that you instilled a glimmer of hope in.’
Belle’s claims also enraged her family. Her mother, Natalie Dal-Bello, also took to the pages of the Australian Women’s Weekly to refute her daughter’s claims. ‘I’ve never seen her cry in her life … I can’t tell you how embarrassed we are about what she has done,’ she fumed. And as for Belle being forced to run the house and look after her autistic brother: ‘What a lot of rubbish,’ said Dal-Bello. ‘Her brother is not autistic and she’s barely done a minute’s housework in her life.’ Oh dear. She added, ‘I’ve practically worked myself into an early grave to give that girl everything she wanted in life.’
Her brother, Nick, who claimed not to have autism, also weighed in. ‘I’m disgusted with Belle and what she’s done,’ he said. ‘It’s about attention. She’s always been like this.’
Former friends have described Gibson as a sociopath, a wolf in sheep’s clothing and a woman who cuts off relationships quickly when they are not going her way. After the truth came out, she had to move out of her and her partner’s beachfront home, return a car she had been loaned, and hand over any remaining profits to charity.
Despite that, Belle’s partner, who is helping to bring up her young son by a former boyfriend, stood by her. He refused to give any interviews, but Belle said he was ‘supportive, but obviously very devastated’ by her betrayal. ‘He’s been very stern, along the lines of, “I just want you to acknowledge where you’ve f***ed up and try not to smooth over that,”’ she said.
But in the storm of anger directed towards Gibson, the people who believed her so unquestioningly and who facilitated her lies managed to duck for cover. Cancer specialist Dr Darren Saunders of the Garvan Institute suggested there were others who needed to take some responsibility. ‘The Belle Gibson enablers are getting off way too lightly,’ he tweeted.
In an effort to clear her name — and trouser a reported $75,000 fee — Gibson then gave an hour-long interview to 60 Minutes on Channel Nine in June 2015. Any thoughts she might have harboured that being paid would mean an easy ride were quickly swept aside.
‘Do you accept that you’re a pathological liar?’ asked hardhitting reporter Tara Brown, after presenting Gibson with fresh evidence that she had never had a brain tumour.
‘No,’ replied Gibson, who maintained that she believed she had been receiving treatment for cancer. ‘I’ve not been intentionally untruthful. I’ve been completely open when speaking about what was my reality and what is my reality now.’
Brown presented her with more evidence of her lies, including the fact that she was not actually 26. ‘Do you take responsibility for driving any people away from conventional medicine?’ asked Brown.
Gibson replied: ‘I never intended on doing that … I accept that might have happened.’
Brown said: ‘You don’t have a good record on telling the truth, do you?’
Afterwards, even Gibson’s estranged mother was compelled to speak out on her daughter’s behalf. ‘That was like committing suicide — she should never have done that interview. [They have] really shown her up to be an absolute fool,’ Dal-Bello told the Herald Sun. ‘Belle told a white lie, aged 23-and-a-half. So what? It is time everyone moves on from this and allows Belle to grow and be a mother to her little boy. She should be left alone so she can get her life back on track.’
Quite right — so what about all those people she conned? Poor Belle. Her mum may want her to be left alone, but those dogged seekers of truth and justice at Consumer Affairs Victoria h
ad other ideas and applied to the Federal Court for leave to pursue legal action over her ‘unconscionable conduct’.
In March 2017, their legal case came to a conclusion with Justice Debbie Mortimer finding Gibson had preyed on people’s empathy and was guilty of misleading and deceptive conduct — although she did concede that the phoney wellness blogger could have been suffering from some kind of delusion. The finding left Gibson open to penalties of more than $1 million. Just how seriously Gibson is going to take that is open to question. The day before the finding she sparked outrage after telling social media followers of the benefits of a deep cellular cleansing and enema program that had saved her life!
However, Gibson is not the only belle at the health and fitness con artists’ ball.
* * *
By the age of 26, Ashy Bines, the perma-tanned ‘Bikini Body’, had created a loyal following of thousands of women who had each paid $100 a pop for access to her Clean Eating Diet Plan, plus the 200,000 women who had signed up to do her Bikini Body Challenge. And why wouldn’t they, when Bines constantly posted shots of herself looking fabulous in bikinis as living proof that the eating and exercise plan worked?
However, in the middle of 2015, it emerged that the world of Ashy Bines was perhaps not quite as clean and healthy as it seemed. First, she and her husband, Steven Evans, were chased by the Australian Tax Office for $300,000 in unpaid taxes and fines in relation to their business.
Then Evans was taken to court by a rival fitness guru, Gold Coast bodybuilder Emily Anderson, who was seeking $500,000 for taking her money and allegedly using it to promote his other businesses while neglecting hers. Payments, it was alleged, included some to the Bikini Body Challenge of … guess who? Ashy Bines!
All of this unwanted attention also brought to light the allegation that Bines had plagiarised some of the recipes in her Clean Eating Diet Plan. Sydney personal trainer Allie Dodds had created the recipes for her Mealspiration blog, before starting a business called The Sweet Sweat in September 2013. She was contacted by Bines, who asked if she could share the recipes with her followers online and on Facebook. ‘I thought, that was OK, she’s going to share a couple of my recipes, give me some credit and that was it,’ said Dodds. But then a colleague spotted her Salmon and Cauliflower Sushi recipe in the 2012 edition of Bine’s Clean Eating Recipe Book. It was fishy, and Bines took to Youtube to defend herself, blaming it all on an unnamed nutritionist.
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels Page 17