Belle Gibson loses out at A Current Affair reporter as Australia's most notorious cancer faker is confronted for the first time in years

Belle Gibson, the shameless con artist who lied about having cancer to promote her food app, has lashed out at reporters for telling them to 'have a little humanity'.

Gibson – the infamous Melbourne fraudster who concocted an elaborate lie that her terminal brain cancer could be cured by a healthy diet – was recently confronted by A Current Affair for failing to pay her huge fines.

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

It is believed that Gibson has yet to pay her debts, which rose to more than $500,000 due to interest when she failed to pay.

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

That is, until she recently bumped into Channel Nine's Sam Cucchiara at a gas station.

Gibson was refueling her Subaru Forester when she was ambushed by Cucchiara – in a segment expected to air on Monday night.

During the clip, Gibson can be seen wearing sunglasses and casual clothes as he greets the cameras and boom microphones with a smile.

The grin was quickly wiped off her face when she was asked when she would pay the fine as she got into her car.

Despite her history, you hear her tell the reporter that she “needs to have a little humanity.”

Then she cracked it: “That's it!”

Before her cheating was undone, 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 facts from the 2017 federal court case, the scam made $440,000 over a three-year period.

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 rose to international fame after she falsely claimed her terminal brain cancer was cured by turning away from conventional treatments and starting to treat herself naturally

She was fined more than $400,000 in 2017 after her hoax was undone, a fine that has yet to be paid due to her massive personal debts

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 ended the letter with dated November 14, 2017, by asking the government to contact its 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.

Belle Gibson's Fake Cancer Saga: How It Happened

Police twice raided her white rental home in Melbourne's north to 'recover' some of her unpaid fines

October 1991: Belle Gibson is born

May 2009: Gibson claims to have undergone multiple surgeries on her heart and also died briefly on the operating table

July 2009: Gibson claims that a doctor has diagnosed her with terminal brain cancer and that she has only four months to live

Early 2013: She launches an Instagram account (@healing_belle) and an accompanying website sharing healthy, wholesome recipes

Mid-2013: Gibson is releasing an app with her recipes called Whole Food Pantry

Mid 2014: Gibson begins working with Apple to develop an Apple Watch-specific platform for the app

November 2014: Cosmopolitan honors Gibson with a Fun, Fearless, Female award in the social media category

March 2015: The Age newspaper releases an investigation into Gibson's claims that he is donating proceeds to charity

April 2015: Women's Weekly publishes an interview with Gibson, in which she admits never to have had brain cancer: 'It's all not true'

May 2015: Victoria's consumer watchdog launches legal action against Gibson's false claims that he can beat cancer through a whole food diet

June 2015: Gibson gives a TV interview with 60 Minutes, in which she claims she's 'not trying to get away with anything'

March 2017: A federal court judge describes Gibson as having a 'relentless obsession with herself and what serves her best interests'

September 2017: Gibson is fined $410,000 by the Federal Court for her false claims about charitable donations

June 2019: Nearly two years after she was ordered to pay fine, Gibson tells court: 'I am not in a position at this stage to pay a $410,000 fine'

December 2019: Consumer Affairs Victoria quietly issues a 'seizure or sale' order against Gibson

January 22, 2020: Sheriff executes seizure and sale warrant on Gibson's Northcote home after inquiries from Daily Mail Australia

January 23, 2020: Daily Mail Australia reveals she was 'adopted' by an Ethiopian group called the Oromo

May 2021: Authorities raid Gibson's Northcote home to recover more than $500,000 in 'fines, penalties and interest'

August 2021: She is ostracized by Melbourne's Oromo community