Australian indie developer Belle Gibson — known for her iOS app The Whole Pantry — has publicly admitted that she made up a story about suffering from terminal brain cancer to boost profits.
“No. None of it’s true,” she told The Australian Women’s Weekly magazine when asked if she had ever had cancer. “I am still jumping between what I think I know and what is reality. I have lived it and I’m not really there yet.”
The 26-year-old entrepreneur based her business around telling others how she had overcome cancer through “healthy living” and without the use of conventional medicine. Apple was seemingly so taken with the story that it flew her to Cupertino to work on delivering one of the first wave of Apple Watch apps — although this has since been pulled.