Have you ever heard of Belle Gibson?

The young Australian woman rose to fame in 2013 for claiming that she had been cured of terminal brain cancer by eating a healthy diet.

Gibson's claims led to her amassing an Instagram following of 200,000 within a year. She also landed a book deal and a health and wellness app - promoted by Apple as the first one ever created - but it all turned out to be a scam. She had never actually had cancer.

Journalist Beau Donelly is the co-author, with Nick Toscano, of The Woman Who Fooled The World. It tells the story of how the pair unravelled Gibson's web of lies and how she managed to fool so many people, and features interviews with those who know her.

Beau explained how he and Nick became involved with investigating the story: "We had been tipped off by one of her friends that she'd been faking cancer."

"We figured if she was lying about this, what else would she be lying about? So we started looking into her other claims."

It subsequently emerged that Gibson had encouraged her hundreds of thousands of followers to raise money for charity, but when the charities in question were contacted, they revealed that none of this money had been donated.

Many of Gibson's followers were cancer patients, or relatives of those with cancer, and her lies had a negative impact for these people who had trusted her.

So how did she manage to get away with it, and why did she do it?

Beau says Gibson "had a history of lying from a very young age."

"She has always lied to gain attention. Face to face, those lies have never really been believed, but when she took her story online it just blew up. She was legitimised in a way by Instagram and by Apple."

Belle Gibson was charged under civil law in Australia for deceptive and misleading conduct and last year she was fined just over $400,000. She is now believed to be living in Melbourne and working on other business ideas, possibly a dating app.