Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
This podcast is supported by FX's English Teacher, a new comedy from executive producers of What We Do in the Shadows and Baskets. English Teacher follows Evan, a teacher in Austin, Texas, who learns if it's really possible to be your full self at your job, while often finding himself at the intersection of the personal, professional, and political aspects of working at a high school. FX's English Teacher premieres September 2nd on FX. Stream on Hulu.
How do you feel great on vacation? Like really good? Easy. You go to Aruba. You'll spend your time relaxing on cool white sand beaches and floating in healing blue water. You'll immerse yourself in natural wonder and find your center on an island where things move at your speed. You won't just feel great. You'll feel relaxed, renewed, and ready for life. That's the Aruba effect. Plan your trip at aruba.com.
Transforming my life has been the absolute hardest and absolute best thing I've ever done. It wasn't so long ago I woke up most mornings with a hangover. I'd rush to get ready for work, scrutinize my appearance in the mirror, and grab coffee and toast on my way to the office. Dinner came out of a box, the microwave, or in the form of a canopy. I had absolutely no idea how to take care of myself, but I didn't really think that was too important.
At 22 years old, Jess Ainscough's life had proceeded exactly according to plan. Fresh out of university, she landed her dream job in Sydney, Australia as an online editor for Dolly magazine. Jess would work all day and party all night. She was a self-described champagne-guzzling, drug-popping, sleep-deprived, perpetually hungover party girl.
which was nothing atypical for an attractive and popular young woman shrouded in the invincibility of youth. Jesainsko would later reflect on those wild days in an article for the magazine she worked for, writing, I was living an ideal life for someone in their early twenties, burning the candle at both ends, paying no attention to how my actions could affect my health, but having a whole lot of fun while I was at it.
It was so taxing on me and my health because I would have to leave home at 7 in the morning. I wouldn't get home till 7 at night. There were super long hours. It was eating lunch at your desk, eating breakfast at your desk, eating dinner either at a party in my case or heating up something out of the freezer when I got home or ordering a takeaway.
I counted down to the weekend just so that I could have some downtime. And even then, I was exhausted from the week because I'd been out partying all week and my weekends were used to kind of recuperate. But then at the same time, it was the weekends. I had to make the most of it so I'd go out again. But in April 2008, three years into her career, Jess Ainscough's fun came to a sudden halt. One morning, Jess woke up with that familiar headache but noticed something else was wrong.
There were numerous lumps developing all over her left arm and hand. Obviously concerned, Jess sought out medical assistance and after a biopsy, doctors informed her that she had Epithelioid Sarcoma, an incredibly rare and slow growing cancer. Jess Ainscough's life would never be the same. By June of that year, she had quit her job, left the late nights behind, and moved back to her hometown on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland.
Jess wanted to be closer to her family while she underwent treatment, which at first included a procedure known as an isolated limb perfusion, where a high dosage of chemotherapy was pumped directly to Jess's arm, and it worked. Her follow-up scans were clean. Jess was cancer-free, which was a bit surprising since the type of cancer she had usually did not respond well to radiation. Not that Jess Ainscough cared. She was just happy it was gone.
But a little more than a year later, in November 2009, Jess was back at the doctor's office with new lumps on her arm and only one option for treatment. Her doctors informed her that for any real chance of long-term survival, they would need to amputate her entire left arm and shoulder. But even then, they would just be buying time. The cancer was terminal. And much to her doctor's dismay, Jess refused the operation. She had other plans.
In a blog post, Jess Ansco wrote: "The way I saw it, I had two choices. I could let them chase the disease around my body until there was nothing left of me to cut, zap or poison. Or I could take responsibility for my illness and bring my body to optimum health so that it can heal itself." So I had that in June 2008, but by November the next year, the cancer had returned. And this time I had no other options.
So that's when I started digging around and looking at alternative therapies to try and save my own life. And this is when I came across Gerson Therapy. Gerson Therapy is basically a natural healing diet developed by a German-born American physician named Max Gerson in the late 1920s, back when doctors were prescribing things like cigarettes and lobotomies.
According to Dr. Gerson, a clean diet consisting of nothing but fruits and vegetables could cure most chronic degenerative diseases, including cancer, in a minimum of two years.
How is that possible? You might ask. Gerson therapy is basically designed to allow the body to heal itself. It's designed to turn on the body's innate ability to heal itself from cancer. So it starves the cancer cells of anything that they need to grow and nourishes them with anything that they need to die, pretty much.
So it's loading your body up with vitamins and minerals and detoxification and oxygenation and alkalizing your cells and just bringing your body to such a healthy state that cancer cannot survive. So Gerson Therapy is essentially a detox program, just like the ones that stay-at-home mothers are selling to each other in Facebook groups today.
And just like its modern-day equivalents, health authorities all around the world have dismissed Gerson therapy as utter quackery. Not that that has ever stopped something from gaining popularity. So I found out about Gerson therapy through my mom who somehow stumbled across it in the... I think it was 2000 when my nan had cancer. My nan had pancreatic cancer and was given two weeks to live.
And so my mom started digging around for alternative options to try and save her as well. Unfortunately, she couldn't stick to the program. It was just a little bit too sick to be able to do any of the regime. So it didn't really work for her. Rest in peace, Grandma. Much like cancer, Gerson therapy has evolved over time. In addition to the strict vegan diet, the daily program now requires drinking 13 glasses of fresh squeezed juice.
as well as meditation, exercise and five coffee enemas. I like mine with milk and sugar. And then you're going to run the coffee through the tube just to get rid of any air bubbles and then run a little bit into the sink. And this is almost ready to go but all we need to do now is lube up the end of this tube using a little bit of coconut oil just to make it nice and nice and slimy for easy entry.
Jess Ainscough learned that technique at the Gerson Clinic in Mexico. She paid $15,000 for a three-week stay, where Gerson experts taught her the ins and outs of the Gerson program. And the reason that video of Jess demonstrating how to self-administer a coffee enema is on the internet is because she put it there. In 2010, Jess Ainscough began to chronicle her personal healing journey through natural means on blogs and social media. She called herself the "Wellness Warrior."
and she gained a devoted following of empathizers, sympathizers and natural healing advocates. But something inside of me told me that doing these things was the right thing and I'm so grateful that I did because
Not only do I get to do something that I absolutely love every day, writing to you every day just makes me giddy with excitement. I love it so much. It's led to a book deal. It's led to doing live events. It's led to doing retreats. And it's led to me being able to spend quality time with my boyfriend, my family, my dog, and myself. None of that is compromise. And that is the best blessing.
But the best blessing of all was that within two years, Jess Ainscough had cured her own cancer. According to Jess, there were no new tumors on her arm or hands and the ones that were already there were shrinking. In that Dolly article, she wrote, "'Cancer is a powerful teacher. Nothing calls for you to assess your life and your priorities quite like being faced with your own mortality. During times of ease, we get caught up in shallow pursuits and pleasures. Hard times call for us to go deep.'
The less meaningful stuff falls aside and we wake up to what's really important. Of course, Jess Ainscough's feel-good story caught the attention of the Australian media, book publishers, and everyone else who's in the business of making a buck off of someone else's talent. She created her own lifestyle guide and shared it online. She had a video web series, a speaking tour, and a book deal. Jess Ainscough had become Australia's most famous cancer-surviving wellness guru.
and she dedicated her time to helping others overcome their own battles. Quote, Somewhere along the way, I realized that I was more than a cancer story. I was a leader, a role model, an educator, and a champion. Jess Ainscough was everything that her mother would soon need. In the midst of her daughter's recovery, 57-year-old Sharon Ainscough was diagnosed with breast cancer, and after witnessing the success of the modalities touted by her daughter,
Sharon rejected conventional medicine in lieu of natural healing, at least for a little while. Sharon Ainscough eventually abandoned her daughter's approach because... because she died in 2013, a few days before Jess's book tour was set to kick off. Needless to say, the death of her mother took a major toll on Jess Ainscough's mental and physical health. She canceled her tour and did not post anything on her blog for almost a year.
Jess finally provided an update in December 2014, but that positive bubbly personality that her followers had come to expect was missing. Jess wrote that she had been, "...challenged, frightened, and cracked open in ways that she never had before." She said that after her mom died, her heart was shattered and that she had no idea how to function without her. And neither did her body, apparently. "...for the first time in my almost seven-year journey with cancer."
Her blog read, quote,
I've had no energy for distractions, so I've literally been lying in bed deeply pondering my situation. I've been meditating for hours, doing visualization techniques and feeling every single emotion that's bubbled up. I've always been numb to my emotions, coding everything in positivity. So this has been a game changer for me, and also very strange. Some weeks I've felt nothing but overwhelming sadness, others I've been really bitter and angry.
The most important part though is that I didn't try to stop or censor any of it, even though I gasped and covered my mouth after shamefully and very uncharacteristically uttering the words "fuck my life" during one particular outburst. I've also spent time doing lots of research into treatment options. I've been speaking to doctors, healers, specialists, and I've been completely opening myself up to attracting the right people who will help me heal, whether they are from the natural medicine world or conventional.
My beliefs have been completely shaken up, and I've had to drop any remnants of fear and ego that were preventing me from exploring these options sooner. I've discovered that when we completely close ourselves off from something, the universe will sure enough give us an experience that makes us see that everything has a place. It's been completely eye-opening and very, very humbling. My motives are not sinister or dangerous.
You would also see that I am simply a young girl, doing her very best to grieve the loss of her mother, to live for as long as she can and the best that she can with a terminal cancer diagnosis, and to leave this world better than when she came into it. I hope you have a beautiful weekend and I can't wait to chat with you soon. Love you. Bye. That was the last blog post that Jess Ainscow ever wrote. She died at home on February 26th, 2015.
a few months before she was set to marry her longtime fiancé. Jess was only 29 years old, and after her death, renowned surgical oncologist David Gorski wrote on his website that Jess Ainscough was simultaneously both a victim and an enabler of the alternative medicine quackery that she promoted, which made it, quote, all the more sad. Jess's family did later confirm that she underwent radiation treatment in a last-ditch effort to save her life,
You know what they say, there are no atheists and foxholes. Family and friends farewell Jess Ainscow, who died last week following a long public battle with an extremely rare form of cancer. The woman, known as a wellness warrior, had inspired others in her quest for health via natural and alternative treatments, blogging regularly about her experience and counseling others in holistic health. She was also a follower of the controversial Gerson therapy, which involves consuming large quantities of fruit and vegetables and daily coffee enemas.
A public ceremony was held for Jess in early March 2015 at LifePoint Baptist Church. Her father shared anecdotes from her childhood and Jess's fiancé described their unending love. A former Australian Idol winner even performed a touching tribute. But those that were in attendance remember one young woman in particular who stole a show, or at least tried to.
That woman, who claimed to be a close friend of Ainscough's, even though they had only met once in person, was seen and heard sobbing uncontrollably in the pews. She even found her way to Jess's home afterwards where she cornered Jess's grieving fiancé and cried on the widow's shoulder. That young woman was 21-year-old Belle Gibson, the same Belle Gibson that had recently claimed her spot amongst Australia's natural healing royalty. But it would be a short reign.
because Bell Gibson had some deep, dark secrets, which would soon be discovered by the entire world. A health and wellness influencer's story of surviving cancer falls apart on this episode of Swindled.
Support for Swindled comes from SimpliSafe.
If you're like me, you're constantly thinking about the safety of the people and things you value most. After my neighbor was robbed at knife point, I knew I needed to secure my home with the best. My research led me to SimpliSafe.com.
I've trusted SimpliSafe to protect my home for five years now, and the level of security and customer care has been incredible. I sleep better every night knowing SimpliSafe's 24/7 monitoring agents are standing by to protect me if someone tries to break in and to send emergency help when I need it most.
I want you to have the same peace of mind that I and so many listeners experience every day, which is why I've partnered with SimpliSafe to offer listeners 20% off a system. Just visit simplisafe.com slash swindled. What I love most about SimpliSafe is that it just keeps getting better. With exclusive live guard protection, SimpliSafe agents can act within five seconds of receiving your alarm and can even see and speak to intruders inside your home, warning them that the police are on their way.
As a SimpliSafe user, it's no surprise that SimpliSafe has been named Best Home Security Systems by U.S. News & World Report for five years running and the Best Customer Service in Home Security by Newsweek.
I'm a huge proponent of SimpliSafe, and I'm very happy with my security system. And you will be too. Protect your home this summer with 20% off any new SimpliSafe system when you sign up for fast protect monitoring. Just visit simplisafe.com slash swindled. That's simplisafe.com slash swindled. There's no safe like SimpliSafe.
Belle Gibson is a mother, a businesswoman, and she's also living with brain cancer. But the 25-year-old has turned her cancer diagnosis into a positive, believe it or not. She's created the world's first health, wellness, and lifestyle app, The Whole Pantry. Life has never been easy for Belle Gibson. Growing up near Brisbane in the early 90s had been somewhat unsettling and unpredictable.
Belle had never met her father. Her brother was severely autistic, and her mother suffered from multiple sclerosis and spent most of the day in bed. Yet, the family was constantly relocating houses and towns to where the newest stepdad awaited. Although Belle was told that the frequent moves were a result of her mother being in the Witness Protection Program, little Annabelle, at five years old, was overburdened with responsibility.
Not only did she have to take care of her family, she also had to take care of herself. Bell told the Australian Women's Weekly quote: "When I started school, my mom went. My daughter is all grown up now. All of a sudden I was walking to school on my own, making school lunches and cleaning the house every day. It was my responsibility to do grocery shopping, do the washing, arrange medical appointments and pick up my brother. I didn't have toys."
Bell says that living with such limited parental support for so long instilled some bad habits. She claims she was severely overweight from constantly overeating and drinking too many sodas and juice. Bell knew that she needed guidance. She would later tell news.com.au quote, "I was, at the time, begging for her to be my mother rather than the opposite way around." It is no wonder that Bell Gibson, at 12 years old, decided to leave the family home to live with a classmate.
But even with the newfound stability of living with friends, Belle did not manage to graduate high school. She dropped out in the 10th grade and took a job at a catering supply company for a few months before moving to Perth where she began working at a call center for a private health insurance company. According to Belle, earning a living by listening to other people's medical horror stories all day every day was a very sobering experience. She told the Weekly Quote,
I was hearing some horrible things about what people were going through. Unfortunately, the 17-year-old would soon have health-related horror stories of her own that she would be inclined to share. In early 2009, Belle Gibson made a series of posts on an internet skateboarding forum with the details of her own life. She announced that she was currently in the hospital undergoing a procedure for a cardiovascular condition. Apparently, Belle had a life-threatening buildup of fluid in a sac around her heart, which needed to be drained.
The procedure literally killed her. She wrote,
Less than a month later, Belle was back at work, but her health had worsened. She was experiencing vision and memory loss. She had trouble maintaining her balance and sometimes she would slur her speech. Belle's doctor wrote her a prescription for antidepressants. A few weeks later at work, in the middle of a phone call with a customer, Belle Gibson had a stroke and fell out of her chair, regardless of what medical professionals had been telling her.
Bell knew that her current symptoms were unrelated to the heart condition she had been dealing with her entire life, and she knew that it was more than simply depression. Bell had the internet. She was able to do her own research. She was no dummy. Bell Gibson's eyes were open, and she wholeheartedly believed that her latest health issues were the result of an HPV cervical cancer vaccine, and so did the hundreds, if not thousands, of people in the anti-vaccination communities in which she had confided.
Through those groups, Bell was introduced to a neurologist and immunologist named Dr. Mark Johns from the Peter MacCallum Cancer Center in Melbourne. Dr. Johns was conducting top secret research related to vaccines, and he asked Bell to participate. One day in June 2009, Dr. Johns arrived at Bell Gibson's house with a suitcase full of equipment and a list of questions. Bell says he used some kind of old-fashioned looking machine with lights and metal sheets to run some diagnostic tests.
The results were not good. He said you have stage four glioblastoma, brain cancer. Bell recalled to the Australian Women's Weekly, "I was terrified." He said you have got four months to live. After receiving the devastating news, Bell called home for support but received very little in return. She told a newspaper quote, "When I was first diagnosed, my mother fell into complete denial and fear, and I had to let go of that relationship.
But one thing Bell Gibson did not let go of was her sense of humor. In July 2009, a few weeks after the diagnosis, she tweeted, Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. This is more fucked than the government giving me cancer. Just to be clear, the government did not give Bell Gibson cancer. A spokesperson for Australia's Department of Health made that much clear in a statement to the Australian Women's Weekly. This sounds exactly like something a government shield would say. Quote,
There is no evidence that HPV vaccines cause brain cancer or neurological disorders. The safety and effectiveness of the HPV vaccine has been extensively researched and considered by drug regulatory authorities all over the world. But that's neither here nor there. What mattered is that Bell Gibson had brain cancer and she had 16 weeks to live.
So she moved from Perth to Melbourne to undergo radiation and chemotherapy to try and shrink the tumor and extend her life. But those conventional treatments began to take a toll on her body. Bell claims that after one particularly grueling session about eight weeks in, she woke up on the lawn of the hospital. Apparently she had blacked out for a couple of hours. Bell says that is the moment when she decided to make a change. If she only had two months left on earth, she did not want to spend them like that.
She told her doctors that she no longer wanted conventional treatment. Bell said she wanted something less invasive and harsh. Something like Gerson therapy, which she had read about online. Bell had watched Jess Ainscough beat cancer with nothing more than carrots and coffee, with a little yoga on the side. To Bell, even the constant enemas sounded more appealing than losing her hair. She told the Daily Mail, quote, "It didn't take me long to notice the stress conventional medicine was putting on my body.
So I started looking for an alternative. I was lying there one night and I read an article about how lemon in water can act as a natural detox. Something clicked and that's when I changed the way I ate and lived. Belle Gibson became a vegetarian. She cut out gluten and dairy. No genetically modified foods or sugar. She began meditating. And she began writing. Her doctors thought she was crazy, of course, but it worked.
Those final 16 weeks of her life came and went. Yet, thanks to natural medicine, Belle was still alive with a tumor in her brain and a bun in the oven. In late 2009, Belle learned that she was pregnant. She was told the baby would never see the light of day but soon she was buying enough coffee for two. And in July 2010, she gave birth to a healthy baby boy. In fact, two years flew by and Belle Gibson had suffered no setbacks.
Despite a seizure every now and then, she was as healthy and happy as could be under the circumstances, but she still needed a little support. Now that she had become estranged from her mother, Bell latched on to a healthy alternative, social media. In May 2013, using the handle at HealingBell on Instagram, Bell Gibson began telling her story and chronicling her journey through posts that were often accompanied with selfies and the kind of inspirational quotes often shared by a recent divorcee.
and people loved it. Belle's account grew to more than 200,000 followers almost instantly. She wrote that she felt like she had tapped into this whole world of unsupported, unmotivated, and uninspired people who were eager to share their own stories. And now Belle Gibson had become their leader. She had become an influencer, and not just any old influencer. Belle was a health and wellness influencer, like every fitness freak dreams of becoming after trying on their first pair of yoga pants.
But you have to admit, it was an inspirational story. Single mother miraculously heals her terminal brain cancer with nothing more than whole foods and holistic medicine. Sounds like complete bullshit. So, naturally, the media picked it up, and Belle used the opportunity to promote her new phone app, which she had developed using credit cards and loans from friends. The app was called The Whole Pantry, and it was the world's first health, wellness, and lifestyle app.
Belle Gibson is part of a new breed of entrepreneur. She is an ecopreneur. Mmm, it tastes like mango. Belle launched the Whole Pantry app last year. It's essentially a recipe collection full of whole foods and vegetarian recipes, which is...
the way that we encourage people to get back to the fundamentals of eating more fruits and vegetables. We really believe that we've revolutionised something that people are becoming increasingly interested and invested in, which is health and wellness. I think it's about getting back to the fundamentals of a healthy life.
We talk about in the app going back to basics and eating more of those fundamental foods, getting adequate water intake, eating more fruits and vegetables. It's really simple and people overthink it. For a person living with brain cancer, Marta, you look incredibly healthy. Bell Gibson launched the whole pantry in August 2013. She referred to the app as an entry point for people wanting to start a more wholesome way of life.
Bell told the Sydney Morning Herald that she was inspired to create it because of the people she had met online. "I was a big user of social media, connecting with people, and I found a tremendous number who were unsupported, whether in their health, relationships, or their lives generally. I thought if there were so many troubled people on my Facebook and Twitter and Instagram network, that wasn't okay. How might I help them? Tell them what I had learned along my journey?
I thought of a blog, a website, or an e-book. And then I thought, what did these people have in common? Easy, it was an iPhone. So I decided to go to that space and build an app. Within the first month of its release, the whole pantry was downloaded more than 200,000 times. It was voted the best food and drink app of 2013. And Belle Gibson made a lot of money. And she was about to make a lot more just as soon as her cookbook was published.
over a million dollars combined over a two-year period. But that's not what the whole pantry was about. In fact, Bell had organized numerous fundraisers for numerous charities in the spirit of giving back. The causes ranged from maternal healthcare organizations in developing nations to funding schools in sub-Saharan Africa. Bell announced that her company had donated $300,000 to different causes in its first two years of operation, and she declared that 25% of her book profits would be donated as well.
due in part to her charitable nature. In 2014, Elle magazine named Belle Gibson the most inspiring woman you've met this year. Cosmopolitan gave her the Fun Fearless Female Award, and the Sunday Telegraph labeled her generous, gorgeous, and courageous. The success of Belle's app had also caught the attention of Apple Inc. In September 2014, the technology giant invited her to their headquarters in Cupertino to work on a top-secret project.
The company was preparing the release of their latest device and they wanted the whole pantry to be a featured player. Apple Watch is the most personal device we've ever created. We set out to make the best watch in the world. In April 2015, Apple CEO Tim Cook unveiled the Apple Watch in front of a live audience.
And on the screen, front and center, on the watch face, was the icon for Bell Gibson's Whole Pantry app. Placed above Nike, Pinterest, Major League Baseball, and American Airlines, the Apple Watch was poised to revolutionize the way people track their health and wellness. So the company had struck a deal with the creator of the world's first health and wellness app to not only develop a watch version of the Whole Pantry, but to also pre-install it on every device sold.
Everybody that purchased the watch would gain immediate access to Bell Gibson's holistic medicine and alternative therapy resources. Resources that probably would have made Steve Jobs proud, you know, if he were still alive. Instead, Mr. Jobs chose to eschew conventional medicine in favor of natural remedies until it was too late and he died. Not everyone is as lucky as Bell Gibson. It was five years ago I was diagnosed with terminal cancer and...
We launched the whole pantry a year ago and that was, you know, took seven months worth of development and I put everything that I knew along my journey with cancer, nutrition and wellness and put it on the most accessible device possible, the iPhone. Bell Gibson's success stemmed from more than just luck. Bell worked hard. She was traveling the world, attending conferences and appearing on every morning talk show they would have her and it paid off. Bell Gibson was building an empire.
The whole pantry now had an app for the iPhone and Apple Watch. There was a book published in Australia with UK and US versions to follow. She had employees, and she planned to expand the brand in the oncoming years. Not to mention, throughout it all, Belle maintained the responsibilities of a single mother. She told news.com.au that all of her free time was spent taking care of her son. Belle wanted to be there for him. Belle wanted to be the kind of parent that she never had.
That priority was even proclaimed on the business card she handed out. They read: "Belle Gibson. Game changer. Mother. Writer." The future was bright, yet in the back of her mind, Belle knew that her time was limited. She felt fine, but she did technically still have cancer. She knew death was chasing her, ready to strip her of everything she had accomplished, and she could hear its footsteps getting louder.
Belle said she wasn't afraid of dying, but thinking about not being able to see her child grow up broke her heart. Quote, When Belle returned to Australia, she made a post on social media announcing some bad news. Quote,
with frustration and ache in my heart my beautiful game-changing community it hurts me to find space tonight to let you all know with love and strength that i've been diagnosed with the third and fourth cancer one is secondary and the other is primary i have cancer in my blood spleen brain uterus and liver i am hurting i wanted to respectfully let you each know and hand some of the energy over to the greater community my team and the whole pantry
Messages of support poured in from Bell's followers in the comments of that post, which attracted almost 9,000 likes.
Bell assured her fans that she would keep them updated and that she was waiting on additional test results. She was putting on a positive face in public but behind the scenes Bell Gibson was devastated. She told the Weekly that she sat for hours crying and crying and crying. She said she asked a friend at the time, "How do you say goodbye to your own child?" It was a tragic situation that no one knows how to prepare for. Bell never intended to bring a kid into the world just to abandon it through death.
Support for Swindled comes from Rocket Money.
Most Americans think they spend about $62 per month on subscriptions. That's very specific, but get this, the real number is closer to $300. That is literally thousands of dollars a year, half of which we've probably forgotten about.
I know I'm guilty, but thankfully, I started using Rocket Money. They found a bunch of subscriptions I'd forgotten all about and then helped me cancel the ones I didn't want anymore. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that finds and cancels your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so that you can grow your savings. With Rocket Money, I have full control over my subscriptions and a clear view of my expenses.
I can see all of my subscriptions in one place. And if I see something I don't want, Rocket Money can help me cancel it with a few taps. Rocket Money will even try to negotiate lower bills for you by up to 20%. All you have to do is submit a picture of your bill and Rocket Money takes care of the rest. They'll deal with customer service for you. It's a dream.
Rocket Money has over 5 million users and has saved a total of $500 million in canceled subscriptions, saving members up to $740 a year when using all of the app's features. Stop wasting money on things you don't use. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to rocketmoney.com slash swindled. That's rocketmoney.com slash swindled. rocketmoney.com slash swindled.
So Bel, looking at what you've announced on your social media, you said that the cancer is now in your blood and your spleen and your brain and your uterus and your liver. That's really, it's serious now, isn't it? Yeah. I'm going to get tested for ovarian cancer. I no longer have cancer in my uterus. Woohoo! Really amazing. When did you get that? Not long ago. Yeah, that's great news. Yeah, but...
It still all feels like it sucks down there because they're like where are these results coming from? And I know. But it's you know just a medicine which is respected throughout Europe and not here in Australia yet. In early 2015, journalists Beau Donnelly and Nick Toscano from Melbourne's The Age newspaper
received a tip from a young woman in the wellness community that had become friends with Belle Gibson. She told the journalists that she suspected Belle was faking her diagnosis. Donnelly and Toscano began to dig. They read every interview Belle had given over the past two years. They scanned every article and social media post looking for clues. There was no smoking gun to be found, but something definitely seemed off.
The journalists thought the details of what Bell had shared about her health and personal life seemed a bit vague and too scripted. So they compiled all of the publicly available details of Bell's cancer and solicited opinions from well-respected medical experts around Melbourne, who all agreed Bell Gibson's claims were totally implausible. Furthermore, Bell Gibson had never looked sick.
And according to members of her inner circle whom the journalist spoke with, none of her friends had ever seen her sick. Nobody could even recall Belle going to a doctor's appointment or taking medication. Except for that one time she had gotten her teeth fixed. All signs pointed to Belle Gibson being a fraud. But that's not a story that both Donnelly and Nick Toscano could just run with.
They still lacked substantial proof that Belle was lying, and no newspaper in their right mind would publicly accuse someone of faking cancer without being absolutely sure of it. But maybe, they hoped, there was a different approach. So the duo kept digging until they found one. Belle's charitable contributions, which she seemed to promote at every possible turn. Donnelly and Toscano contacted the charities for which Belle had publicly raised funds.
Not a single one of them could find records of contribution from Bell Gibson, nor the whole pantry, despite her social media declarations. Not the 2H Project, not the Asylum Seeker Resource Center, not the Birthing Kids Foundation, not One Girl, nor the Bumai Sahat Foundation. In fact, many of the organizations had not even been made aware that fundraisers on their behalf had taken place.
The journalists also discovered that neither Bell Gibson nor her company were registered as fundraisers as required by Australian law. Bell Gibson had some questions to answer. So on March 5th, 2015, Bo Donnelly and Nick Toscano tried to call Bell, but her phone was turned off. She was busy traveling to the Sunshine Coast for Jess Ainscough's funeral.
Instead of a conversation, the journalist settled on an email to Belle that contained 21 questions. Asking her things like why hadn't she passed on the charitable donations to the organizations she had promised them to and what had those funds been spent on if not their intended cause. There were also questions about the current status of Belle's health, the names of her doctors and locations where she had received treatment. Factual questions that Belle should have been able to answer easily.
Donnelly and Toscano also inquired about Bell's age, because one of the business records they reviewed listed a date of birth that suggested she was actually two years younger than she publicly claimed. Immediately after that list of questions was sent to Bell Gibson, something interesting happened. According to both Donnelly and Nick Toscano's book, The Woman Who Fooled the World, which details their expose of the woman in question, Bell started making phone calls.
The journalists write: "The email was delivered at 3:20 p.m. on the Thursday. Gibson immediately hit the phones. At 3:30 p.m., she called the Asylum Seeker Resource Center in Footscray. She spoke to its director of fundraising for 15 minutes, apologized for the misunderstanding, and promised to pay them $20,000. At 4:01 p.m., she transferred $1,000 to One Girl, the charity that had been chasing her for its promised donation for more than a year.
and then she sent a screenshot of the internet banking receipt from her phone to its CEO. She fired off emails to the other charities too. Bell Gibson was panicking. It wasn't until a quarter after one in the morning that Donnelly and Toscano finally received answers to their questions. If you can call them answers. In a 1500 word emailed response, Bell Gibson failed to directly address any of the questions posed.
Instead, she pointed to cash flow problems and ineptitude of former employees as the reason why her company failed to follow through on its charitable promises. And Bell made a point to highlight the $1,000 donation to one girl as proof that she had, in fact, contributed. It was the same $1,000 donation that Bell had made earlier that day, 15 months after it was promised. Undeterred with Bell's dodginess, Donnelly and Toscano responded with the same unanswered questions.
Bell replied back, claiming something to the effect of being too preoccupied with her close friend's funeral to expound. Exposing Bell's health claims would have to wait, but the journalist would publish what they had already found to be true.
On Sunday evening, March 8th, 2015, an article written by Bo Donnelly and Nick Toscano was posted to the Age newspaper's website. It was titled, Inspirational App Developers' Charity Money is Missing, and it detailed how Bell Gibson and the whole pantry had organized two campaigns to benefit five charities and never handed over the funds.
Minutes after publication, a long-winded response was posted on the whole pantry's Facebook page. It was obviously written by Bell Gibson, even though the text referred to her in third person and titled her the quote, Previous Managing Director. Bell addressed the article, which she assured her audience was based on incorrect claims and assumptions.
Again, she blamed company growing pains and startup stumbles for its recent charitable oversights, and she promised to make good on her guarantees just as soon as the bookkeeping was straightened out. At first, the followers' comments on the post were supportive of Bell in the form of accusations against the media of perpetrating fake news and sensationalism, but soon enough, those voices of solidarity were drowned out by a tsunami of anger.
Appalling. Your organisation, not the media. Money for charity doesn't go into cash flow. That is beyond unethical. Surely it's illegal. Enriching yourselves while falsely pretending to be helping others in need. Stay classy. You skipped the entire point in your very long and wordy response. You took the money from people who gave you the money, believing it would go to said charities. You failed to forward on the money.
That, my friends, is dishonesty. Theft in the highest degree and takes advantage of people's good nature. Shame on you. Bell Gibson stayed up late into the morning hours responding to every comment that she could before she eventually gave up and began deleting those that were most critical, which only served to throw more fuel on the flames of a fire that was just getting started.
The next day, March 9th, 2015, a different newspaper, The Australian, published excerpts of a new interview with Bell, in which she suggested that the spread of cancer to her liver, uterus, spleen, and blood may have been a misdiagnosis. Bell told the newspaper that it was hard to admit that maybe she was wrong, and she described feeling confused, bordering on humiliated, which is a funny way to celebrate not having cancer. But unlike Bell's brain cancer,
Bell's misclaims about her health and philanthropy were spreading. Every news organization in Australia was talking about it. Additional reports followed that quoted former friends, acquaintances, and medical professionals who placed doubt on even her initial claims. One cancer specialist even pointed out to the Australian newspaper that brain tumors were measured in grades, not stages, which is how Bell had been mistakenly describing hers. So Bell Gibson began deleting the evidence.
Thousands of posts on the whole pantry's social media accounts that referenced Belle's diagnosis or her fundraising activities were erased. Out of sight, out of mind, like a brain tumor that never existed. But for the people who looked up to Belle Gibson, for the people that were actually sick, for the people that listened to her advice and took it seriously, their cancers would not simply disappear with the click of a button. People like Kylie Willey, a 43-year-old Melbourne mom who was battling lymphoma,
She was lying in a hospital bed in 2014, going through chemotherapy, dying from the inside out. When she started following Belle Gibson online, Kylie told Mamma Mia, quote, It was absolutely horrendous. And there's Belle Gibson, sipping coconut water, living this amazing life because she wasn't going through chemo for two weeks. So Kylie stopped her treatment, followed Belle Gibson's lead, and almost killed her.
Thankfully, Kylie Willie returned to conventional treatment in time and is now in remission. But she told 9 News that she still resents the person who had once inspired her.
I'm so angry at her for making me feel like a fool, for taking my money when I donated to her cause and buying her books and her apps. You're at the depths of despair. You're just, you know, you're looking for any alternative to what horror you're going through when you're going through cancer treatment. It's like nothing that I can ever explain. It was the worst time of my life. It was horrible. She totally preyed on me.
And then there was the Schwarz family, whom Bell Gibson had befriended online in 2013. After learning that their youngest member, 7-year-old Joshua Schwarz, was battling a brain tumor of his own. Not only was the tumor located on a part of his brain where operating on it was impossible, Joshua also suffered from a rare genetic disorder that stopped cells from regenerating, which meant that chemotherapy would hurt far more than it would help. Conventional treatments were not an option.
And just like Bell Gibson, Joshua Schwarz was told that he only had four months to live. Bell Gibson bonded with Joshua's mother Penny through social media. The two moms and their sons even met in real life for play dates at the park. Bell saw a lot of herself in Joshua. In the acknowledgments section of her book, she named him the quote "second little man after her own heart" and she wrote that they shared an "unintimidated friendship" with their "brain bugs."
But when the stories about Bell Gibson's lies started hitting the front pages, Penny Schwarz told the Herald Sun that she felt humiliated and betrayed. Quote, I wanted to believe her story, but when I messaged her to see if she was okay and ask her about the allegations, she would reply but avoided giving any clear answers or chose to completely avoid my questions. I thought she was an inspiration. I feel like I don't even know this person anymore.
Penny was also surprised to learn that Belle had dedicated 100% of one week's whole pantry ab cells to the Schwarz family. Penny was surprised because her family had never received a dime from Belle Gibson and never would. Neighbors of the Schwarz family had already been suspicious about the family's fundraising efforts after Joshua outlived his diagnosis by years. And with the new revelations about Schwarz family friend Belle Gibson becoming mainstream news, that skepticism became more vicious.
Penny had to shut down Joshua's fundraising page on Facebook because it became overwhelmed with trolls calling her son a cancer fraud. "Our son relies on fundraising or the sale of our home for his ongoing health needs," Penny told the Herald Sun. "We are privately funding these costs 100 percent. Without our ability to provide for our son's ongoing health needs, the consequences will be life-threatening." Joshua Schwartz lost his battle with cancer on Saturday, January 21, 2017.
His sister Jade set up a new fundraising website to cover the cost of his funeral. She wrote: "Joshua was even dancing 15 minutes before it happened. He passed quietly surrounded by an abundance of love and light. His beautiful body just decided it was time. The $20,000 target for Joshua Schwartz's funeral was reached in just two days. Now a national punchline, Bell Gibson stayed out of public view for a few months.
Only surfacing once on Facebook using the alias Harry Gibson to clap back at the former friends that had betrayed her by talking to the media. She wrote, "...at the end of it, it says more about you and your priorities than me or the story you'll get paid to tell. With love and before I get bullied to my death, enjoy your contribution to the world. For I know the work my company and its content did changed hundreds of thousands for the better."
With Bell Gibson inaccessible, the public's rage turned to those that had lent credibility to her story, namely Apple and Penguin Books. Behind the scenes, Apple remained loyal to Bell at first. The company never made a public statement defending her, but the whole pantry apps remained for sale on their store for a week after the scandal broke.
But by March 17, 2015, the apps were pulled and every trace of the company's cozy relationship with the game changer had disappeared. It was pretty obvious that Apple had not bothered to verify Bell Gibson's story before promoting it. And later, it became pretty evident that Penguin tried to verify it, which resulted in concerns of their own. Though the publishing company publicly claimed that it had not confirmed the validity of Bell's cancer saga, as it was not required for a cookbook,
A 90 minute media practice interview obtained by Fairfax Media shows the company preparing Belle for the questions she would soon receive while promoting it. One of the strangest moments of the video is when Belle is asked about her treatment and she rambles on for a few minutes about a German protocol that wasn't yet available in Australia. I don't know how I want to talk about this because I've not talked about it publicly. I've spoken to you about it though, haven't I? Yeah. Following like a German medicine protocol and...
Every single doctor and practitioner that knows about it or doesn't know about it, all of them are seeing results. You know, which, because they're like, where are these results coming from? And I know. But it's, you know, just a medicine which is respected throughout Europe and not here in Australia yet. And how do you take it? What is it exactly? I don't know how I'm going to talk about this.
I might have to do some more reading on it but it's a machine which is like an electronic pulse pushes into the cells and I take medicine when that machine's operating on a program. The program, the computer and machine that I'm on runs this program based on my biology and the way that my body operates through my sleep and times of the day. I take medicine
And one of the most telling moments of the interview comes at the end, when a Penguin executive offers Bell some advice. Wise words that fell on deaf ears. After the articles were published, Penguin Books said they had reached out to Bell for clarification on the media's accusations, but they never heard back.
The company had no choice but to withdraw her book from sale. Yet Bell's critics were still wondering how the book had even made it that far. Couldn't Penguin have done just a bit more due diligence on the claims they were cutting down trees to amplify? Consumer Affairs Victoria certainly thought so. Penguin Books was eventually fined $30,000 for failing to validate the factual content of Bell Gibson's book.
and they are now required to include a warning on all the books it publishes that feature claims about natural healing. Belle Gibson's book was no longer on shelves, but that did not mean the story was over. Belle would soon tell the world that it was all a work of fiction, but would the truth actually set her free?
In April 2015, Bell Gibson broke her silence. In an interview with the Australian Women's Weekly, the Whole Pantry founder admitted to fabricating all of her cancer claims.
Journalist Claire Weaver asked Belle directly if she had ever been sick. Belle responded, quote, No, none of it is true. Belle said that she was still jumping between what she thought she knew and what was reality. Claire Weaver also asked Belle what it was like to all of a sudden not have cancer after five years of living that identity. Belle responded, quote, I don't know. It's just very scary, to be honest.
Bell told Claire that she had been financially and personally ruined.
Her business was in liquidation, she was moving out of her beachside home, and she had to return her rental car. Bell also claimed that she had lost all of her friends and that her home address had been published online, and now she was receiving death threats from strangers. Quote,
"I understand the confusion and suspicion, but I also know that people need to draw a line in the sand where they still treat someone with some level of respect or humility, and I have not been receiving that." Poor Belle Gibson. Always the victim. She explained that her deceitful behavior was probably the result of her difficult childhood. Caring for a disabled mother and an autistic brother when she was as young as five years old had undoubtedly made an impact. But according to Belle, she did not want forgiveness.
Nor did she apologize or express any regret. "I just think speaking out was the responsible thing to do. Above anything, I would like people to say, 'Okay, she's human. She's obviously had a big life. She's respectfully come to the table and said what she's needed to say. And now it's time for her to grow and heal. Oh brother, here we go again. Healing Bell Part 2: A Different Kind of Bug in the Brain."
Thankfully, Belle spared the world another social media wellness journey, but she did continue her non-apology apology tour. Next stop, Nine Networks, 60 Minutes. But first, a little detour. The Women's Weekly followed up their interview of Belle Gibson the following month with an interview with someone that took umbrage with the fact that Belle had blamed the relationship with her estranged mother as the reason for her lifelong struggles with the truth.
and that someone the weekly talked to was Belle's estranged mother, Natalie Dalbello, who dismissed many of the claims Belle had made about their relationship as a lot of rubbish. For one, Belle's mother confirmed that she does indeed suffer from multiple sclerosis, but alleged that the amount of assistance provided by her daughter had been greatly exaggerated, amongst other things. Quote,
And this is how she repays me.
As for providing some kind of alternative explanation for her daughter's behavior, Bell's mother offered this quote: "She's just a girl who always had ideas above her station. She was never happy with what she had and embarrassed by her family. Her tastes just became more and more expensive and she was living beyond her means. And she was addicted to her computer. She used to fall asleep with it. Always on Facebook. Always online. But that world is not real. It's not healthy.
She just plucked bits and pieces of other people's medical problems and assumed them as her own. She had a heart problem growing up, but that was it. I thought her interview with the Weekly was going to be an apology on Belle's behalf, an admission of guilt, but it wasn't. She doesn't seem to be sorry. There doesn't appear to be any remorse. I've never seen her cry in her life. I'm not even sure she's capable of empathy.
Bell's brother Nick was also quite upset with his sister's actions. Quote, I'm disgusted with Bell and what she's done. It's about attention. She's always been like this. Well, if it was attention Bell Gibson desired, more attention she would get. In June 2015, Bell sat down with Channel 9's Tara Brown for what many described afterwards as one of the most cringeworthy interviews ever broadcast on television.
On camera, Bell again admitted that her cancer was fake, but blamed it on a misdiagnosis from Dr. Mark Johns, the neurologist from the Peter McCallum Center that came to her house with his weird German cancer machine in 2009. Even though it had already been discovered that the Peter McCallum Center had no record of a Mark Johns ever being employed at its facility, nor had any doctor with that name ever been registered.
Tara Brown did not take it easy on her. Right, you claimed also in your book that you underwent chemotherapy and radiotherapy for two months. True or false? At the time. True or false? True. Because at the time, I believed I was having radiotherapy. So, false. You're 23, right? Well, actually, how old are you?
I've always been raised as being currently a 26 year old. How old are you? Well I live knowing as I've always known that I would be 26. Okay, Bill. This is a really, really simple question. How old are you? I believe that I'm 26. I have two birth certificates and I've had my name changed four times.
Nobody wants to live with the fear of a terminal illness or dying. No, and nobody knows that better than people who actually live with that. But I also think when you're young and have gone through the situation I had just gone through, you are melodramatic. I don't have... Melodramatic now? I mean, they're straight-out lies. You weren't in hospital, you're claiming you were...
Claimed you died twice. You didn't. Claimed you had two cardiac arrests. You didn't. That's not melodramatic. That's straight out lying. It is. Extraordinary lies. And if you lie about that and you go to those extraordinary lengths to create the story around that lie, how can we believe anything you say now? Tara, I have lost everything and I'm not here to regain it. But when you hit rock bottom, there is...
only an opportunity to be honest and to heal and to apologize. And I'm here to do that. If you haven't seen it and would like to, you can re-watch Tara Brown's entire 30-minute interview with Bell Gibson on YouTube. Those that watched it when it aired have probably already seen enough, though, including Dr. Michael Carr-Gregg, one of Australia's highest-profile psychologists, who shared his reaction with news.com.au. Quote,
It was excruciating to watch, and I expressed some degree of disappointment that Channel 9 aired the interview. Because it is so patently obvious that she's not well. Really, is whatever they paid, if they paid her, enough to exploit someone like that? $75,000. That's how much Bell Gibson was paid by Channel 9 to be grilled by Tara Brown. The network made two payments to Bell's lawyers in the same month the program aired.
Channel 9 has never confirmed nor denied doing so, but an outraged public had everything they needed to resharpen their pitchforks. And this was before anybody knew the full amount that Bell had received. A petition on Change.org asking Bell Gibson to donate her payment from the 60 Minutes interview to charity was signed more than 11,000 times.
The description of the petition read,
Speaking to the Herald Sun, Belle's mother Natalie Dalbello stood up for her daughter with a statement that included one of the most Australian sentences ever uttered. Quote, Belle is allowed to tell little porcupines who the hell doesn't tell a lie in their life. It is time everyone moves on from this and allows Belle to grow and be a mother to her little boy. She should be left alone so she can get her life back on track. Not so fast, Miss Dalbello.
Although a criminal investigation of Bell Gibson was dropped back in April 2015, in May 2016, Consumer Affairs Victoria brought legal action against Bell for breaking consumer law. She faced up to $1 million in fines. A federal court judgment only confirming what Bell Gibson's victims already knew. They were played by a heartless fraud. Federal Court Justice Deborah Mortimer delivered her decision on March 15th, 2017.
Bell was convicted of five breaches of consumer law and was later fined a total of $410,000, of which $150,000 was for failing to donate what she had promised to the family of Joshua Schwarz, which Justice Mortimer described as the quote, most serious contravention of the law. Bell Gibson was not present in court for her conviction. Apparently, she had better things to do.
Days before the court's decision, it was reported that Bell had re-emerged on social media, this time posting on a forum for MasterFastSystem, a multi-level marketing and batshit crazy type of herbal diet cleansing program whose website I regretfully have to inform you features a poo and pee museum. And yes, that's exactly what it sounds like. I found out the hard way.
Using the familiar alias Harry Gibson, Bell announced in a post that MasterFast's system had reduced the size of her tonsils, changed the color of her eyes, and cured the cavities in her teeth. And she wrote in detail about a huge rope worm that was released from her body after one eventful enema. Quote,
So based on this math, I'm guessing it was at least 60 centimeters at minimum. I felt a huge relief and was floating all day afterwards. When the media reported on Bell's new health venture, the posts disappeared. But that massive $410,000 fine did not.
And by April 2019, almost two years after it was levied, Bell had yet to pay that fine and the authorities were losing patience and were making moves to charge her with the contempt of court, which meant that Bell Gibson could go to prison. "Bell, any comment about what's going on in court today? Any apology for your actions at all? Do you have anything to say, Bell? Do you expect to see any prison time? How's your health these days? Any plans for a new risk report?"
In the summer of 2019, Bell Gibson was summoned to court several times. In one appearance, she showed up wearing designer sunglasses and a $200 dress and was overheard complaining about the media coverage. Bell said it was sad that they were giving her so much attention when there were more important cases they could be covering. In June 2019, Bell Gibson actually took the stand to explain why she could not afford to pay the fine.
She claimed she had been surviving on odd jobs, welfare payments and child support while juggling maxed out credit cards and other exceptional debts. Cancer fraud Belle Gibson has broken down in tears, claiming she wants to pay her $410,000 fine for lying to consumers but is facing bankruptcy. Prosecutors became frustrated with the 27-year-old today, describing her as unresponsive to questions about her spending habits.
Since the collapse of her company, Bell Gibson's reported incomes for 2016 and 2017 were $15,000 and $20,000 respectively. However, Consumer Affairs calculated that Bell had spent at least $90,000 during that same time period. Something wasn't adding up.
Receipts introduced in court revealed that Belle Gibson had spent $13,000 on clothes and cosmetics. She had invested $2,500 in Bitcoin and even donated money via GoFundMe to the Flint water crisis. Belle had even taken her 8-year-old son on a month-long trip to Kenya and Ethiopia, which reportedly cost $5,000. When asked about it, Belle said it was a gift from Clive, who she referred to as her roommate, and played dumb about how his income was derived.
Even though everybody already knew that Clive was Belle's longtime partner. But Belle Gibson stuck to her story. She said she wished she could pay it, but it just wasn't in the cards at this time. And Belle said she couldn't afford to keep returning to court because lawyers are expensive. So on January 22nd, 2020, the court came to her.
Cancer con woman, Belle Gibson has had her home in Melbourne raided in a bid to recoup more than half a million dollars of outstanding fines. Gibson made hundreds of thousands of dollars from a social media empire after claiming alternative therapies and nutrition cured her brain cancer. It was later revealed she never had the disease. Consumer Affairs says they will not stop until they receive all the money she owes.
Consumer Affairs Victoria released a statement that said they were committed to recovering the debt Ms. Gibson owes the Victorian public, and that they will continue to pursue her until it is repaid in full. The items seized from Bell Gibson's home will be sent to auction at a later date. The next day, January 23, 2020, a video surfaced from October 2019 of Bell Gibson at an event in Melbourne where she's wearing a headscarf and speaking the Oromo language.
She was on camera speaking to Shabo Media about the Oromo people whom she said had adopted her and the political situation in Ethiopia which she referred to as "back home". My involvement in the Oromo community has been for the last four years and it started through volunteering and then I became deeply invested in the community because I saw the character and the values of your people.
And through the rights of the Oromo, I feel completely adopted by your nation and your people. And I feel like my heart is as invested as yours and your family's. I see no difference in your struggle and the struggle that I have for fighting for the liberation of Oromia. Belle Gibson looks happy in the video, smiling and laughing like she finally found a community that would still accept her.
However, the same day that video appeared online, the president of the Australian Oromo Community Association in Victoria made a statement that he had just learned of the woman's backstory when the raid on her property made the news and expressed a desire for Belle to stop saying that she was part of the community. Belle Gibson was on her own again, alone with her thoughts, her lies, her delusions and insecurities.
Armchair psychologists have suggested that she suffers from Munchausen by internet, a psychiatric disorder wherein those affected feign disease, illness, or psychological trauma to draw attention, sympathy, or reassurance to themselves. Others have suggested a personality disorder or factitious disorder or something else. Maybe childhood trauma really is the explanation. Maybe it's learned behavior. Maybe she really does want to help people. Your guess is as good as mine.
But until we know for certain, we will just have to wait and see what she comes up with next. Swindled is written, researched, produced, and hosted by me, a concerned citizen, with original music by Trevor Howard, which you can now listen to at deformer.com. That's D-E-F-O-R-M-R. Trevor just released his first collection of songs from the show, and it's amazing to hear them fully fleshed out. Please give it a listen. deformer.com. There's a link in the show notes.
For more information about Swindled, you can visit swindledpodcast.com and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter at Swindled Podcast. Or you can send us a postcard. P.O. Box 6044, Austin, Texas 78762. But please, no packages. We do not trust you. Also, I want to thank Christy from Canadian True Crime, Sarah from Let's Talk About Sex, and Cambo from True Crime Island for lending their wonderful Australian accents to this episode.
If you're like me and you can't get enough, go listen to their podcast, please. Another show you should listen to is Dark Topic, where host Jack Luna covers the world's darkest stories while wrapping the listener tight in an itchy blanket. It's one of my personal favorites, and if you like the tone and presentation of Swindled, I think you'll really dig Dark Topic. The production and writing is so good. It's very unique, and that's hard to find these days. Dark Topic. Go check it out.
As for Swindled, we are a completely independent production, which means no network, no investors, no bosses, no shadowy money men, and we plan to keep it that way. But we need your support. Become a valued listener at patreon.com slash swindled. For as little as $5 a month, you will receive early access to new episodes and exclusive access to bonus episodes, which you can't find anywhere else.
And the best part, everything is commercial free and you can listen right inside of your favorite podcast app just like you're doing right now. Patreon.com slash swindled.
Or if you want to support the show and need something to wear to your high school reunion, consider buying something you don't need at swindledpodcast.com/shop. There are stickers, patches, hats, hoodies, posters, t-shirts, and more. Go check it out. swindledpodcast.com/shop And remember, use coupon code CAPITALISM for 10% off. If you don't want anything in return for your support, you can always simply donate using the form on the homepage. Anything helps.
It's good to be back. That's it. Thanks for listening. My name is Rodolfo Villarreal III from Austin, Texas. My name is A from Melbourne, Victoria. Hello, my name is Aaron from Raleigh, North Carolina. And I am a concerned citizen.
Thanks to SimpliSafe for sponsoring the show. Protect your home this summer with 20% off any new SimpliSafe system when you sign up for Fast Protect Monitoring. Just visit simplisafe.com slash swindled. That's simplisafe.com slash swindled. There's no safe like SimpliSafe.