If you spend much online time reading diet and health news, you’re bound to have heard about the Kimkims diet scam, a low-carb (fee-based) program created by a woman who used the screen name “Kimmer”.

For years, “Kimmer” kept her real identity under wraps while she boasted of losing more than 200 pounds in a year and keeping it off for five years. Basically, her official plan was a self-made variation of the early Atkins program promoting very lean meats, little fat and 3 cups of fresh (or 1/2 cup cooked) vegetables each day.

That, at least, is what she publicly recommended and the story run by publications like Women’s World. But that wasn’t the real plan that “Kimmer” purportedly followed, nor the one that the majority of her (paid) members followed, either.

Within the safety of their members-only site “Kimmer” promoted the “plan behind the plan” which encourages dieters to consume as little as 500 calories per day and applauds when they reach a state where they are SNATT, an acronym for the Sick and Nauseous All The Time feeling triggered by near-starvation.

That’s what “Kimmer” did to lose 200 pounds, many reasoned, so why shouldn’t they give it a try, too? Except she didn’t lose that weight, and neither she nor any of the women sharing their “before/after” testimonials on her site were who they claimed to be.

Kimmer’s contract permitted her to buy out her 50% partner’s interest in the Kimkins enterprise after 12 months for a lump sum, with the buy out price escalating over time thereafter. Sure enough, Kimmer did tell her partner, Catherine, that she wanted to buy her out, and so Catherine left the company entirely in Kimmer’s hands.

Then Kimmer began a smear campaign against Catherine, attempting to impugn her integrity. And that pissed of Catherine’s husband, who hired a private investigator to learn just who Kimmer really was.

Kimmer had told Catherine that her name is Heidi Diaz, and that name also appeared on her PayPal records as well as the company’s press releases. Those releases, it turns out, also included Diaz’s home phone number which was easily cross-referenced with her home address. So the PI ran the license plate number of the woman living at that address. They came back registered to one Heidi Kimberly Diaz who, as it turns out, anything but the 118 pound beauty in the “after” photos of herself she’d posted online.

As the surveillance photos reveal, Diaz (a/k/a Kimmer) is morbidly obese and well into middle age. This revelation sent shockwaves through the internet and prompted Diaz to claim that she really had lost all that weight but gained it back due to personal reasons she wouldnt’ go into.

But that was another lie.

Diaz’s former husband jumped in to comment at a forum on the scam and explained that Diaz never lost weight and, worse yet, has had repeated legal problems stemming from various scams and cons she’s run. According to the comment, she lives on disability payments due to mental illness and gets by using her son Brandon’s credit now that he’s over 18.

Problems apparently run in the family, if this email from the ex-girlfriend of Diaz’s son is to be believed. Brandon’s ex says he abandoned their child together, and that both he and Diaz are alcoholics.

The legal troubles don’t end there, either, folks.

Several times on her blog, “Kimmer” wrote of her duties as a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) for children and claimed to be a foster parent, although none of the insiders at her site ever met her foster kids much less received notices of graduations or communion invitations. She told staff that she would donate membership proceeds to a fund that would provide homes for her foster children when they reached the age of majority.

The email from Brandon’s ex-girlfriend referenced above does allude to Diaz having two foster children at one point, but no one has been able to confirm that. As for being a CASA volunteer, court personnel have told others that Diaz was not and has never been registered with CASA.

A lawsuit has been filed against Diaz and Kimkims, and the 11 attorneys representing the litigants are seeking class action certification.

And it is entirely possible that Heidi Kimberly Diaz — a/k/a “Kimmer” — may one day be slapped with a copyright lawsuit over photos posted on the Kimkims website. Heidi, you see, posted one rather infamous picture — now known as “The woman in the red dress” — claiming that it revealed her stunning weight loss success. It turns out, however, that the photo was actually lifted from a Russian dating site. (See what Heidi now claims to look like — and weigh — here.)

But it wasn’t just Heidi’s photo that was faked. Numerous “after” photos of various Kimkims success stories were stolen directly from overseas online dating sites.

Which poses the question: how did real people do on the Kimkins diet?

Unfortunately, many of those Kimmer scammed have wound up in the hospital with grave health problems brought on by the near-starvation, high-laxative diet recommended by this con artist who seems to justify her scam by pointing out that, hey, they’re thin.

If you’ve been scammed, find information about the lawsuit here.