Fact-checking Netflix's 'Apple Cider Vinegar': The truth about wellness fraud Belle Gibson

Annabelle “Belle” Gibson achieved Instagram-star status while proclaiming she had an elixir for managing her terminal cancer.

“I have been healing a severe and malignant brain cancer for the past few years with natural medicine, Gerson therapy and foods,” Gibson posted to Instagram in 2013. It would’ve been a miracle if the Australian had survived for four years after being diagnosed with a brain tumor and given merely weeks or months to live. In reality, it was a con implemented to launch a wellness empire that included her “Whole Pantry” cookbook (2015) and an app.

Such cancer fakers have inspired recent docuseries including ABC’s “Scamanda” (Thursdays, 9 EST/PST) and Peacock’s “Anatomy of Lies.” Now Netflix has turned Gibson’s grift into a six-episode limited series, “Apple Cider Vinegar” (now streaming). Creator Samantha Strauss first laid eyes on Gibson via her 2015 “60 Minutes Australia” interview, when reporter Tara Brown pleaded with Gibson to “just be honest.”

“It caught my attention that, from my point of view in the interview, she still didn't want to admit that she had been lying when she had so patently been lying,” Strauss tells USA TODAY. “The real-life Belle is different from the Belle (Kaitlyn Dever) we've created in the show. I’ve never met Belle. We've never sat down and had a conversation. I was given the facts of her life, and I've created a character from that.”Each episode of “Apple Cider Vinegar” emphasizes the miniseries is inspired by a true story, with fictionalized characters and events tossed in, and that the real Belle wasn't paid for her story. Here’s how the onscreen version compares to real life.

Is there a real-life Milla Blake?

In the series, Milla Blake (Alycia Debnam-Carey) embodies, at least for a time, everything that Belle wanted to be. Milla found notoriety and financial success after sharing how she treated her cancer naturally.

There are several similarities between Milla and an Australian woman named Jessica Ainscough, who wrote about her battle with epithelioid sarcoma after being diagnosed in 2008 at 22, the same age Milla was when doctors discovered her health issues.

Ainscough, dubbed the “Wellness Warrior,” said in an interview shared on YouTube in 2012 that, like Milla, doctors injected a high dose of chemotherapy into her arm, but cancer resurfaced. Doctors wanted to amputate Ainscough’s arm and give her full-body chemotherapy, Ainscough said. But she was warned that treatment likely wouldn’t have been enough to save her life. “Basically, my case was terminal, and they told me I was probably going to be dead by about 25.” She turned to Gerson Therapy, advertised as “a natural treatment that activates the body’s extraordinary ability to heal itself through an organic, plant-based diet, raw juices, coffee enemas and natural supplements.” Ainscough died in 2015 at 29.

Strauss says Belle’s adversary is “inspired by a whole lot of people, but really is just her own character. I loved the idea of the person who was lying to herself while Belle was lying to the world.”

Lucy (Tilda Cobham-Hervey), who battles metastatic breast cancer, is a fictional character who demonstrates “the real-world cost of what Belle did,” says Strauss.

Did Belle Gibson visit that very suspicious doctor?

In the series, Belle takes her young son to a man, presenting himself as a doctor, to be seen for his upset stomach. The man, who established his practice in a warehouse, also examines Belle in her undergarments. He gives her a belt, attaches electrodes to her temples and places tubes in her hands, which show "evidence" of “cluster” and “DNA damage” in Belle’s liver. “You’re sick,” he tells her. The man then sells Belle a machine for $10,000 for use at home that would allegedly stop her tumors from growing.

It’s an unbelievable and upsetting scene that doesn’t venture too far from a story Gibson shared during her “60 Minutes Australia” interview. She said in 2009, a doctor came to her home and tested her using “a machine with lights on the front,” that supposedly relied on “German technology.” Monitoring frequencies, it concluded that Belle had a terminal brain tumor.

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The real-life journalists who caught Belle Gibson

As in “Apple Cider Vinegar,” reporters Nick Toscano and Beau Donelly received a tip in 2015 that Gibson might be a fraudster, they recently told The Sydney Morning Herald. They discovered that many organizations Gibson pledged money had not received the funds, which shaped their first Gibson story. In the series one of the reporters, Justin (Mark Coles Smith) is married to Lucy, a fictional character who entices him to investigate Belle because of the connection.

The journalists, who went on to document Gibson’s deceptions in the book “The Woman Who Fooled the World,” added that (as in the show) a panicked Gibson began phoning the organizations, sending proof of bank transfers and attributing the discrepancy to a cash flow issue.

In “Apple Cider Vinegar,” Belle raises funds so that a young man named Hunter can have his brain tumor removed. But that money never makes its way to Hunter’s family. In real life, Gibson raised funds for Joshua Schwarz, who was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer in 2013 at age 5. The Herald Sun reported in 2015 that Schwarz’s parents were “blindsided” by Gibson's efforts ? in contrast to the show, she collected the money but never told the family ? and had not received a cent.

Did Belle Gibson really crash a funeral?

In the series finale, Belle arrives late to Milla’s funeral, sticking out like a sore thumb amid friends and family burdened by genuine grief. When Milla’s fiancé dedicates a song to her on his acoustic guitar, Belle distracts attendees with her loud sobs.

In “The Woman Who Fooled the World,” Toscano and Donelly write that Gibson created a commotion at Ainscough’s funeral, waling “at times uncontrollably, and over the top of everyone else.”

As one witness described, it was “like she was trying to prove that she was more devastated than everybody else who was there,” just as the show portrays. It seemed to be a reaction disproportionate to their brief interaction, which Ainscough’s manager, Yvette Luciano, characterized as only “an Instagram comment or two.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Apple Cider Vinegar' fact-check: Belle Gibson's shocking, true story