Thursday, March 13, 2008

THE DEPOSITION OF HEIDI DIAZ, PART ONE

SUMMARY OF THE DEPOSITION OF HEIDI DIAZ, PART ONE

Who is Heidi Diaz?

Heidi Diaz has been known by the following names: Kimmer, Jennifer Dancer, Brad Curtis, Kimberely Stewart, and Kimberely Drake. She also testified that she was known on the Kimkins.com website as Vanessa, an affiliate manager. She had used the email Vanessa2lucky@yahoo.com. She also used Brandon Diaz name without his permission to receive an affiliate payment. She registered Brandon Diaz as the owner of the Kimkins website without his permission. She then switched the name of the owner to Renee Drake who was the mother of Ms. Diaz. Ms. Drake died in 1970. She has also used her niece’s name, Vanessa Romero.

How did Heidi Diaz Deceive Kimkins.com Members?


Heidi Diaz admitted that she has used false testimonials to promote the Kimkins.com website. Exhibit 2 to her deposition transcript revealed a picture of the alleged founder of Kimkins.com. This picture is the well-known photograph of the Russian woman in a red dress. She admitted that the woman featured in Exhibit 2 as Kimmer is not Heidi Diaz. It is a picture that she obtained from the internet. The text adjacent to the photograph was also false. “Kimmer” did not lose 198 pounds in 11 months as promoted on the website. She also admitted that the woman featured in the picture did not receive a graduate degree in public administration and was not a volunteer court appointed special advocate for abused children.

Exhibit 3 featured another screenshot from the Kimkins.com website that contained the image of the infamous woman in the red dress that was identified as Kimmer. Again, she claimed that the adjacent text was partially false and that the photo of Kimmer was in fact the same photo that she obtained off the internet. On that same page, she admitted that the featured story of Bambi, who purportedly lost 122 pounds was in fact false. She did claim that a company known as Clexus New Media employed an individual known by the name of Aliyar Firat. Mr. Firat reportedly supplied Heidi Diaz with a picture of the woman in the red dress. Mr. Firat stated that he would rather use an actual photo of Heidi Diaz, but Ms. Diaz purportedly did not want to reveal her identity.

Exhibit 4 is another screenshot from the Kimkins.com website. She admitted that the “before” picture was actually Heidi Diaz taken years before the start of Kimkins.com website. She again confirmed that the “after” photo was not her and was a picture she had taken from the internet. The text provided in Exhibit 4 was also false in that she had not gone from 318 pounds to 118 pounds in 11 months.

Exhibit 5 contained four photographs. The first photograph on the top was actually Heidi Diaz, but the subsequent photographs, used in various advertisements for Kimkins.com and designated as Kimmer, were in fact models. She had taken said photographs from other internet sites to be used on Kimkins.com.

She claimed the sole reason for not disclosing her identity prior to November 12, 2007 was to preserve her privacy. However, she admitted that at the time she made the subject misrepresentations, she did not feel her customers, who signed up for lifetime memberships, were entitled to the truth about her personal weight loss success with the Kimkins diet. In retrospect, she did put her privacy rights over that of her customer’s rights to know the truth about the weight loss results of the Kimkins diet.

She also admitted that she used numerous pictures of women from other websites and put these pictures adjacent to fictionalized Kimkins weight loss success stories. She admits that the women featured in the photos marked in Exhibit 50 were not in fact members of the Kimkins.com website and were not on the Kimkins Diet. She stated that the adjacent texts were false, but were predicated on success stories from the Low Carb Friends website that predated the Kimkins.com site. However, she has absolutely no documentation of any of the alleged success stories that were used as a basis for the fraudulent testimonials that were attached as Exhibit 50. Further, she has no witnesses to back up her explanation.

She admits that she knew that potential Kimkins.com customers would rely on her false representations. As a consequence, she claimed that she had offered a full refund for those people who relied on her past misrepresentations.

1 comment:

carla23 said...

I have not received a refund since I signed up last June 2007; so how come she said she'd give full refund to anyone who was taken in by all her false representations of people who had lost weight? I guess that's why the lawsuit! I could not get my money back through paypal so waiting for the trial to get my $69 back.