When Jessica Ainscough’s memorial was held nearly ten years ago, the church could barely contain the hundreds of mourners. A sprinter at school and a dynamo in life, the 29-year-old, who’d spent seven years battling cancer, was known to the 1.5 million people who followed her on her blog and social media as the ‘Wellness Warrior’. But to those who truly loved her, she was Jet. When close family and friends retired to Jess’s home on Australia’s subtropical Sunshine Coast for the wake, they hoped for a private and intimate gathering to respectfully remember her.

So you can imagine their surprise when celebrity health influencer and fellow cancer sufferer Belle Gibson knocked on the door, having flown nearly 1,000 miles from her home in Melbourne for the service of a woman she had barely known. But it’s what happened next that was truly alarming. Once inside, Belle, then 23, began weeping hysterically. Initially she seemed distressed over Jess’s death. But as she sat on the floor of the bedroom Jess had shared with her fiance, commercial property consultant Tallon Pamenter, it soon became clear to onlookers trying to comfort her that she wasn’t crying over the tragic loss of a beautiful young woman; she was upset about her own alleged diagnosis.

Jessica Ainscough, who died from cancer in 2015, aged 30, had 1.5 million followers on social media where she was known as the Wellness Warrior. The influencer, pictured with fiance Tallon Pamenter, had battled cancer for seven years. Influencer scammer Belle Gibson faked having inoperable brain cancer and falsely claimed her healthy lifestyle and eating 'cured' her of the disease. ‘She was more concerned that she had a brain tumour and that she might not have a long time to live,’ recalls Melanie Elliott, who had been best friends with Jess since the beginning of high school in Queensland.

‘We were all comforting her. As strange as it was that she was even there, we were comforting her, believing this poor girl was dealing with an incredibly difficult prognosis.’. Belle even drew Tallon, still in shock at the death of the woman he had planned to marry that coming September, into a private conversation in the bedroom, sobbing on his shoulder. While friends felt Belle’s outpourings were inappropriate, it was nothing compared to the bombshell that dropped just a few days later, when it emerged that the global wellness entrepreneur – one of Instagram’s first ‘super influencers’ – might not be what she seemed.

Belle had amassed more than 300,000 followers with her story of how, after being told she only had four months to live, she ‘cured’ her inoperable brain cancer through healthy eating, massages and alternative therapies. She referenced oxygen therapy, herbal treatments and a diet free of gluten and refined sugar, and launched an app and wrote a cookbook off the back of this. But her narrative of deceit quickly began to unravel as it was revealed that money she made from app and book sales (at least £220,000) which she had promised to donate to charities had never reached them.

With pressure mounting as more and more journalists began investigating her claims, Belle admitted in April 2015 that she had lied about having terminal brain cancer that had spread to her spleen, liver, blood and uterus, saying: ‘None of it is true.’. She also fraudulently alleged that she had donated $300,000 to charity. The scammer is portrayed by Dopesick's Kaitlyn Dever in the upcoming Netflix series Apple Cider Vinegar.

The so-called ‘queen bee of wellness’ was not an inspiration, but a heartless hoaxer who’d duped genuine cancer sufferers with her web of lies. If Jess’s friends were furious to learn that Belle had deceived them during their time of grief, they’re equally concerned that the pair are again being linked in forthcoming Netflix drama Apple Cider Vinegar, starring Golden Globe nominee Kaitlyn Dever as Belle and Alycia Debnam-Carey as Milla, a character inspired by Jess.

Billed as a ‘true-ish story based on a lie’, it dramatises the birth of the influencer industry – in particular ‘two young women who set out to cure their life-threatening illnesses through health and wellness’. The issue? Only one of them had cancer. The title refers to an ingredient that was lauded for being full of magical, anti-cancer properties, though this has been widely debunked. Jess’s friends say that the woman they knew should not be tarnished with the same brush as conwoman Belle.

Indeed, Belle’s own brother Nick told me in a previous interview for this newspaper that she should be in prison. In 2017, Belle was found guilty of five breaches of consumer law and fined £240,000 for misleading her readers about donating money to charity. The actress playing Milla says: ‘It’s a heartbreaking story of the damage they both caused.’. But Jess’s story is as conflicting as it is traumatic. Though she was indeed a cancer sufferer, she also spread misinformation about healing herself with unproven methods.