Belle Gibson was paid a huge amount for her bombshell 2015 interview on Channel Nine’s 60 Minutes.
The con artist, whose story has been thrust back into the spotlight with a Netflix dramatisation, was reportedly paid $75,000 to sit down with journalist Tara Brown.
According to The Australian, the payment Gibson received was not mentioned in the 60 Minutes special which aired on Monday night.
Age journalists Nick Toscano and Beau Donelly, who were first to expose her failure to make a promised donation to charity, appeared on the program.
Toscano, a business writer at Melbourne’s The Age newspaper, and his former colleague Donelly, revealed she was not all she seemed on March 8, 2015, when they exposed her failure to make a promised $300,000 donation to charity.
However, it was another journalist, Richard Guilliatt, who broke the real story when he exposed the truth about her false cancer claims just two days later on March 10 in rival newspaper, The Australian.
Belle Gibson (pictured on 60 Minutes) was paid a huge amount for her bombshell 2015 interview on Channel Nine’s 60 Minutes
The bestselling author was shortlisted for a coveted Walkley Award for All Media Scoop of the Year for his startling ‘Belle Gibson Exposed’ revelations later that year.
Gibson rose to prominence in 2012 as a self-proclaimed health guru who had ‘cured’ her own brain cancer through healthy eating, clean living and ‘positive thinking.’
Within a year, her inspirational Instagram account @healing_belle had amassed thousands of followers, many of them hopeful cancer sufferers, who would go on to download her wellness app, The Whole Pantry, and buy her cookbook of the same name.
Throughout it all, Gibson claimed her earnings – reportedly more than $1 million – would be donated to various cancer charities.
But there was just one big problem: Gibson never had cancer, and eventually her empire came crashing down after two Australian journalists discovered she had been lying about it all – not just her disease, but her philanthropy too.
The tale of the wellness scammer is now reaching a global audience thanks to Netflix’s Apple Cider Vinegar, a six-part series starring Kaitlyn Dever as Gibson and Alycia Debnam-Carey as Milla, another cancer influencer who actually had the disease.
Despite swindling millions, Gibson never faced any jail time.
After a drawn-out case in the Federal Court of Australia, she was ordered to pay AU$410,000 (US$257,000) for her false claims of charitable donations.
The con artist, whose story has been thrust back into the spotlight with a Netflix dramatisation, was reportedly paid $75,000 to sit down with journalist Tara Brown
Combined with her legal fees, she faced a total payout of about half a million dollars (US$313,000).
Eight years on, she has not paid that fine.
Instead, despite her eye-watering debts, she appears to be living a relatively normal life as a suburban single mother in Melbourne.
Since Apple Cider Vinegar launched on the streamer on February 6, many viewers have expressed their shock over Gibson’s apparent lack of punishment.
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