I was diagnosed with cancer at 19 and then was scammed by con artist Belle Gibson who said she could cure it

Belle Gibson is the latest fraudster to have a TV show made on how she swindled people out of money by pretending healthy eating and green juices cured her brain cancer. However, it soon became clear that Belle's natural remedies didn't work and that she never even had cancer to begin with. The dramatised Netflix show titled Apple Cider Vinegar follows Belle as she becomes an overnight success with a wellness app that 'helped her beat cancer.'.

In 2013, the 24-year-old Australian launched the best-selling app and made headline news for her against-the-odds story of surviving cancer with a healthy lifestyle. Starting as a blogger in 2009, Belle claimed she was diagnosed with "malignant brain cancer" and given "six to eight months" to live. However, Belle said she had chosen to withdraw from chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatment, and instead embarked on "a quest to heal myself naturally… through nutrition, patience, determination and love".

She credited her diet with curing her cancer, releasing The Whole Pantry app and cookbook to share her recipes. With 200,000 followers on Instagram at the time, many of whom were cancer patients, she conned them into thinking she had found a cure. And one of those was fellow Aussie Bella Johnston. At the age of 19, Bella was diagnosed with a paraganglioma, a rare endocrine tumour, in 2009 and was surrounded by older people in the hospital leaving her feeling isolated.

So when she found Belle's social media and saw she was roughly the same age and battling cancer too, she was hooked. Bella saw that the influencer had claimed to manage the disease with diet, exercise and alternative medicine and as a result, Bella wanted to follow in her footsteps. But unbeknownst to Bella, the cancer survivor she looked up to was a con artist who had never had the disease. Now Bella has taken to TikTok (spicyjohnston) to reveal she fell for the scam, writing: "When I was 15 I was misdiagnosed with anorexia, but at 19 they found out it was actually cancer.

"Then I got scammed by a woman who said she could cure it with green juice and now there's a documentary and TV show about it on Netflix.". Bella used the hashtags Bellegibson and AppleciderVinegar under the video. Look at this woman, look at how healthy she is, she's got brain cancer. Speaking on the ITV documentary, Instagram's Worst Con Artist, Bella, now 29, said it was easy to compare herself to Belle and feel like she should take a different approach to her treatment.

She said: "I guess there was that ideology that it was the medicine that makes you look sick, and she's got cancer, but she looks so good because she fuels her body with this amazing food, and I look like s*** because I went down the modern medicine route.". Everything you need to know about different types of Cancer. Bowel cancer symptoms: What are they and when should I start to worry?. What is prostate cancer? Signs and symptoms of the condition.

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What is glioblastoma and what are the symptoms?. "I tried to discuss with my parents about letting go of the conventional medicine side of things and exploring alternative medicine and I used Belle Gibson as an example. "I was like: 'Look at this woman, look at how healthy she is, she's got brain cancer.'. "So, I started to incorporate the alternative medicine side of things into my life as much as I could, [including] green juices, smoothies, organics, superfoods, coconut water, all that kind of stuff.".

She concluded: "I just wanted to be like she was, I put her on such a pedestal, I just thought she was amazing.". Thankfully, Bella still underwent radiotherapy and surgery to remove the cancer and was given the all-clear five years after her diagnosis in 2014. Like the rest of Belle's followers, she was left in utter shock when in 2015, the influencer admitted to lying about having cancer at all. It began when she wrote on Instagram that her cancer was back and had spread.

Suspicions grew about the likelihood of Belle's story and whether the various charities she promised to give money to from her book sales actually came to fruition. Following an investigation by Fairfax Media, it was discovered that none of the charities Belle had named had received a penny from her. In an interview with Australia Women's Weekly, she said: 'No… None of it's true,' before adding she hoped people would forgive her.