Belle Gibson, who defrauded customers with a false claim of using a self-patterned wellness program to “beat” a brain cancer she never had, might finally be staring down the barrel of actual jail time following a court ruling this afternoon.
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Last year, a Federal Court judge ordered Gibson to pay $410,000 in fines over five contraventions of Australian consumer law, stemming from her book and subsequent app The Whole Pantry that Consumer Affairs Victoria alleged misled and outright lied to desperate Australian consumers. Consumer Affairs charged that Gibson completely fabricated an elaborate story about suffering brain cancer in order to promote and distribute her products, which netted her a reported $420,000 from consumers.
Since the ruling in September of last year, Gibson has not paid a single cent of the fine, which lead to today’s court decision.
Consumer Affairs launched additional Federal Court action against Gibson in July after it became apparent the highly-maligned 27-year-old had no intention of paying up.
That action sought to have the original ruling amended to include specific warnings regarding failure to comply.
This afternoon, Justice Debbie Mortimer granted that application, meaning now that if Gibson makes no attempts to pay the court order, she can be pursued on charges of contempt of court. That, in turn, means Gibson is now staring down the barrel of possible jail time.
Justice Mortimer noted Gibson exhibited a “cavalier attitude” towards legal proceedings against her before issuing the penal notice which warns she is now “liable to imprisonment, sequestration of property or other punishment” for continued non-compliance.
Justice Mortimer also noted that Gibson seemed completely uninterested in legal proceedings until the application, and subsequent enforceable consequences, were made in September, noting “it would appear to have dawned on Ms Gibson, eventually, that endorsement of the 28 September 2017 orders could have real consequences for her, if she continued with her noncompliance with those orders.”
Unsurprisingly, Gibson was not present in court today to hear today’s ruling.
