AAP
Fake wellness blogger Belle Gibson arrived at the Federal Court in Melbourne on Tuesday over failure to pay a $410,000 fine for fleecing vulnerable Australians.
WATCH the video below.
The cancer con artist arrived at court dressed in black, covering her face with dark sunglasses.
The blogger was penalised in the Federal Court in September 2017 for five breaches of Australian Consumer Law after falsely claiming that she had healed herself of brain cancer by using natural remedies.
She also lied to supporters about donating money from her Whole Pantry app and book sales to various charities, including a boy with inoperable brain cancer.
The fake wellness guru was summoned last month to appear in the Federal Court on Tuesday for examination of her financial affairs following her non-compliance.
She has already been warned she faces jail time for failing to pay the penalty, imposed on her in 2017 by Federal Court Justice Debra Mortimer, for five breaches of consumer laws.
Inside, her barrister Andrew Tregardh told the court he hoped the matter could be dealt with today, reported Daily Mail.
“My client doesn’t have unlimited resources to pay for lawyers to assist her in this endeavour,” he said. “She can’t afford to come back.”
In February, Gibson came under fire after she allegedly spent $15,000 on a luxury African safari instead of paying her fine.
Belle’s web of lies began in 2013 when she launched her Instagram account and Whole Pantry blog, where she pretended to cure herself of brain cancer by fake claims of healthy living.
Her scam was revealed in 2015 by Women’s Weekly, who published an article where belle declared “none of it’s true”.
Neither her cancer diagnosis, nor her ‘wellness cures’, were real.
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