slamboard

I’ve mentioned a few times that Catherine has complete backups of data from the time of her association with Kimkins and Heidi Diaz, April 2006 to September 2006. These records include:

• PayPal transactions for all Kimkins.com member signups prior to October 1, 2006. The records contain information including amounts paid by members, member names, email addresses, and some postal addresses.
• PayPal transactions for site expenses including affiliate payouts.
• PayPal transactions for profit share payments made to Heidi Diaz.
• Kimkins.com website files and scripts and database backups. This includes the Kimkins.com forum, private messages, and chat logs for the period in question. Specifically, the records contain information about fundraising solicitations that were made on behalf of foster children Heidi Diaz claimed to have in her care.

Catherine is prepared to provide copies of these records to all attorneys or official investigators involved in pending investigations and civil actions. Please contact me through the comments of this post if you would like to receive this information.

During the course of my coverage of the Kimkins/Kimmer/Heidi Diaz story and my wife Catherine’s experiences as Heidi Diaz’ early Kimkins partner, there are some pieces of information I have not yet shared. This before picture is one of them.

Heidi send this picture to Catherine in an email dated July 17, 2006 — the same email in which she first provided the seated patio “after” photo and the famous profile before picture in the white floral top and white pants. Since this picture I’m sharing now has never, to my knowledge, been published I was concerned that there may be copyright issues. Given recent events, I think that the newsworthiness of this photo makes my publication of it fair use.

Click on the thumbnail to see the image just as Catherine received it. The image is a large file and provides the clearest view of Heidi’s face to date. Brandon is in the photo and since this provides a valuable clue to the approximate date of the photo, I have not cropped him out. He appears to be about four or five years old and so I think it’s likely that this photo was taken several years before the blue shirt pictures.

Read more Heidi Diaz (Kimmer) and the Kimkins diet saga here and here.

Southern California PI Robert Charlton of Alliance Investigative Services also took these surveillance photos of Heidi Diaz outside her residence. Mr. Charlton kept the residence, a two-bedroom apartment, under surveillance for days. He says that the only two people living in the apartment are Heidi Diaz and her son Brandon — no foster kids. Mr. Charlton does have a photograph of Brandon but I will not be publishing it at this time, since Brandon is only barely an adult.

Mr. Charlton told me something extraordinarily disturbing, but relevant to the discussion about Heidi’s hairstyles. At one point during the extensive surveillance he observed Heidi seated at her computer near an upstairs window, without her wig on. Heidi Diaz — and I do not know why — is bald.

Read more Heidi Diaz (Kimmer) and the Kimkins diet saga here and here.

Riverside County, California private investigator Robert Charlton of Alliance Investigative Services took these surveillance pictures of Heidi Diaz outside of the Kimkins.com post office box rental facility on N. McKinley Street, Corona, California. This is the address on the Kimkins.com domain registration.

As you can see, Heidi enters the post office box rental facility and then comes back out carrying some mail. Once again, please note that Mr. Charlton ran the plates on the minivan and it belongs to Heidi Diaz.

Read more Heidi Diaz (Kimmer) and the Kimkins diet saga here and here.

This is one of a group of 21 pictures I received today from Robert Charlton of Alliance Investigative Services, a private investigation firm in Corona, California. The pictures were taken on August 15, 2007. Click the thumbnail to see the full-sized picture.

I am spending some time to edit the remaining pictures to remove identifying details such as Heidi Diaz’ home address and the license plate from her van. This will take a little time. However, I intend to post the rest of the pictures later today.

The private investigator states that he is certain that these pictures are of the subject Heidi Diaz. Some of the details of how he obtained his information are trade secrets which he will not divulge. However, he states:

• He ran the plate on the minivan she was driving and it came back registered to Heidi Diaz.
• There is a small trash can in a public area at Heidi’s front door. The trash can has no lid and inside it, face up, was a receipt from a customer to Kimkins.com.

I am looking forward to the chance to interview Robert further on his experiences and observations during his lengthy surveillance of Heidi Diaz, and I will share more information as it becomes available.

Personally, I thought nothing could shock me about Heidi Diaz. However, today I can truly say I was shocked. How can an obese woman spend so much time making other heavy women feel so inadequate?

I have obtained pictures from a Southern California private investigator. He believes the pictures are Heidi Diaz — Kimmer from Kimkins. I was SHOCKED.

UPDATE: I just heard from the private investigator who conducted surveillance, and he wants it made clear that he is certain the photos are of Heidi Diaz. More soon.

Read my Kimkins.com series here and see all the Kimkins-related Slamboard posts here.

Thanks to Kimkins Dangers, we may have some new insight into the truth about Kimmer aka Heidi Diaz. One of their readers found this PlentyOfFish.com profile of “Kimmer2″. PlentyOfFish is a popular free dating site started around 2003. This profile lists Kimmer’s son’s age as 16, which would date it about two years ago.

Could this profile be a hoax? At first, I seriously considered the possibility that the profile was faked. But here’s why I don’t think that’s the case: the uncropped photos on this profile, which appear to be of Heidi and her son Brandon (who is now about 18 years old) have not to my knowledge been seen anywhere else online.

Take a look at the picture with the marina in the background. Heidi send this exact uncropped picture to Catherine to crop and use as her before picture for Kimkins.com. Catherine has never released the uncropped photo to anyone else. Neither of us had seen the uncropped seated photo until now.

If Heidi did indeed create this dating profile herself, it seems quite likely that she is now an older, perhaps heavier version of the woman in the blue sweater. After all, why not post the red dress photo if that is what she looks like now?

Also, the profile says Kimmer is a former foster mom. If Heidi did not really have foster children when she accepted money fundraised in their name (summer of 2006) then she could perhaps find herself facing criminal liability for fraud.

Things are only going to get more interesting.

Today the Kimkins.com camp announced the appointment of Christin Sherburne as Director of Media & Public Relations.

Christin was the Woman’s World cover model. In the midst of the discussion in the past couple of months about the identity and weight loss claims of Kimkins creator Heidi Diaz (”Kimmer”) a story surfaced that Christin had begged Heidi to meet her during Christin’s trip to LA for the Woman’s World interview and photoshoot, but Heidi brushed her off. To the best of my knowledge nobody, even Christin, can say that they have met “Kimmer” in person or verify that she is the woman in her diverse assortment of “after” pictures.

Christin, a Kimkins affiliate who makes commissions from sales she helps drive to the site, has deflected my attempts to seek her comment on the alleged brush-off. However, I have been told that she was very disappointed and I wonder, given the revelations of the past couple of months, whether she still has faith in Diaz’s integrity.

Christin is facing a tremendous challenge as the Kimkins controversy swirls, damaging details about Heidi Diaz continue to surface, and more and more people come out against the Kimkins diet and the so-called “plan behind the plan” encouragement of starvation-level calories and laxative abuse. Many women are now coming forward with accounts of medical crises they attribute to the Kimkins diet. Even low carb blogger Jimmy Moore has renounced his support of the Kimkins diet.

I have information that suggests that new information about the identity of Heidi Diaz may be about to surface in the coming weeks, making Christin’s new position even more difficult. Stay tuned.

Read my series about Kimkins.com and the controversy about Heidi Diaz (aka Kimmer) here.

In the Kimkins controversy storm that has swirled these past few weeks around the net’s most popular low carb blogger, Jimmy Moore, I had started to wonder whether my admiration of the man had been misplaced. Turns out, absolutely not!

Many people have called Jimmy stubborn, misguided, a hothead, and much worse — but it takes a real man of integrity to shoulder the responsibility that Jimmy did on Friday with his no-holds-barred apology to the low carb community and renunciation of his affiliation with Kimmer/Heidi Diaz of Kimkins.com. My respect for Jimmy Moore has deepened profoundly.

Jimmy appears to be in the process of removing every last Kimkins affiliate link and positive blog post he has made about Kimkins. This represents a big financial hit for him. However, the low carb community is rallying around him and I can only hope that this lost income will be cushioned by the increased support.

Heidi Diaz is publicly “supporting” Jimmy’s decision right now; reading between the lines, though, she implies that he made the decision for business reasons, and I really don’t think that’s the story. I would advise Jimmy to prepare for the possibility that Heidi will turn on him now, but I’m sure he’s seen and read enough at this point to know that already.

Bravo, Jimmy Moore!

UPDATE: Looks like at least one other former Kimkins affiliate has decided to sever ties.

This is part six of a series of posts about successful fad diet site Kimkins.com and its mysterious and controversial creator, “Kimmer,” or Heidi Kimberly Diaz. My wife Catherine was Heidi’s business partner in the founding of the Kimkins.com site. You can find the first post and table of contents here.

Heidi spent July and August of 2006 alternating between manic promotion of the Kimkins.com site and periodic frustration over the demands of her members on her time and attention. By mid-August, Catherine had seen enough that her initial respect for Heidi was a distant memory and she was increasingly unhappy in the partnership. She was walking on eggshells to avoid unnecessarily triggering Heidi’s irritable moods.

This unhappiness accompanied a worry that had been forming in Catherine’s mind. In negotiating the partnership agreement, Catherine and Heidi had agreed in their contract that Heidi could buy out Catherine’s interest in the partnership at any point in the first 12 months of the Kimkins.com business for a certain lump sum. After 12 months had elapsed, the contractual buyout price would change to an amount equal to Catherine’s share of the profits for the trailing 12-month period immediately preceding the buyout.

Kimkins.com had exceeded expectations in two ways: it was both more profitable, and far more work, than either Heidi or Catherine had anticipated. Kimkins.com was more than a full-time job for both of them. The bottom line was this: because of profits that exceeded far exceeded expectations, if Heidi bought Catherine out in month 12, she would pay just a small fraction of what the buyout would cost in month 13.

By late August, Catherine had become thoroughly sick of Heidi, her moods, and the way she did business. There was no love lost; it was obvious that Heidi was only tolerating Catherine’s presence and influence in business decisions because of the work and technical expertise Catherine was contributing. A suspicion was becoming a certainty: Heidi would avail herself of Catherine’s presence as a business partner until nearly the end of the 12-month period and then buy her out.

Catherine decided to be proactive and demand a renegotiation of the buyout clause. Catherine told Heidi that she could not continue to devote all her time in return for such an undervalued interest in the business, and she requested a more equitable buyout. She felt that there was a good chance that Heidi would opt to buy her out right away, and she looked forward to getting out of the partnership. As she anticipated, and to her relief, Heidi soon announced that she was exercising her option to buy Catherine out.

The details of the transaction were set out and all the business assets were conveyed at the end of September 2006. Between her share of the site profits during her tenure and the buyout lump sum, and based on a 50-hour average workweek during the time she was involved with Kimkins.com, Catherine made just over $10 an hour for her time launching and developing the business. However, the education and life lessons she acquired were tremendously valuable.

Catherine was happy to be out of the partnership on what seemed at least to be civil terms. Heidi had made a show of being polite and gracious toward Catherine. It’s amazing how women who dislike one another can go through the motions of being nice, but Catherine had no illusions about Heidi’s real feelings. She was, however, somewhat taken aback when she realized that her Kimkins.com membership had been cut off a few days after the buyout was final. Shrugging it off as Heidi’s prerogative, Catherine moved on with other projects.

Then Heidi did something so inexplicably vindictive and downright wrong that Catherine has not forgiven her: she attempted to smear Catherine’s honesty and integrity to Kimkins.com’s most successful affiliate, Jimmy Moore.

To provide a little background, when Jimmy joined Kimkins.com as an affiliate he requested payment by check instead of PayPal. Since she knew Jimmy would be a valuable affiliate, Catherine made an exception to the PayPal-only rule and agreed to cut a check for him every month and mail it from our home in Europe. The final affiliate payments from Catherine’s last month with Kimkins went out on October 5, 2006, and Catherine mailed Jimmy’s check as usual.

On October 7, 2006 Jimmy wrote to Heidi to inquire about his affiliate payment arrangements now that Catherine was gone.

Heidi replied, with a copy to Catherine, on October 8 [emphasis added]:

She [Catherine] assured me that all affiliates were paid at the end of September. She sent me an Excel spreadsheet which I have been unable to open so I don’t have an accounting of September expenses, including affiliates. I hope everyone was paid!

Catherine responded to both Heidi and Jimmy, again October 8:

The check went out as it usually does last week to Jimmy. All the other affiliates who were owed money by the Kimkins affiliate program were paid via PayPal, even the affiliates who had not yet reached their minimum, as per our agreement Heidi. I will forward the PayPal receipts to you if you’d like since you seem to be uncertain about whether the payout took place.

Heidi, this is the first time you have followed up with me about your access issue with Google spreadsheets since you mentioned the day of the Kimkins handover transaction that you had a one-time problem logging in. I had assumed that it was resolved since I had not heard from you! Please let me know what email address you are using to access Google spreadsheets and I’ll make sure you can get in or send you a file copy instead.

I am frankly surprised, Heidi, that you would use such a tone about the issue when you have not informed me that you were still unable to get into Google spreadsheets. My receipts and books regarding Kimkins are open and if you need further documentation about ANYTHING let me know.

Jimmy, it was a total pleasure working with you! As in the past, if you do not receive your check by the third week in October let me know and I’ll get it reissued to you. The amount for September was $287.52. Heidi has possession of the affiliate program and database if you need details. If she is still using the same software, affiliates have a log in and are able to go in and see their reports at any time. I’m sure Heidi would be happy to help you out with that if you need your log in reissued.

To which Heidi replied on the same date [emphasis added]:

Jimmy, I apologize for you being in the middle. I received the password for the affiliate program and no training or guidelines. From what I see you earned $655 last month, but Catherine has a different figure. I’ll research it and make up and difference owing.

Catherine was shocked. We wondered, why would Heidi lie about such a thing? There was nothing to be gained by attempting to damage Catherine’s reputation in this way and, with Catherine in the know about many of Heidi’s lies and manipulations, it would seem that there was much to lose. My opinion is that some people are just wired that way — to react first by lying instead of telling the truth, and by being mean rather than being kind.

Catherine had had it, and after defending herself and offering full disclosure of all financial records to Jimmy (an offer that stands to this day) she wrote to Heidi on October 8:

I am really aghast at how you are behaving with Jimmy and I simply do not understand it. I have always been 100% honest and forthright in my business dealings with you and the Kimkins affiliates and I have the records to prove it, so in the end you are going to make yourself look bad to try to imply otherwise.

If this slanderous behavior continues on your part I will have no choice but to defend myself with the truth. If necessary, I will publish a full accounting of our business dealings and records (minus the members’ identifying details of course) and forward it to our affiliates, the IRS, and Social Security Disability Insurance authorities.

To the best of Catherine’s knowledge Heidi backed away from her smear campaign with Jimmy once Catherine stood up for herself in this way.

The check, of course, arrived in the mail late and was cashed by Jimmy without incident.

NEXT: Kimkins.com Part VII - Business Lessons Learned