Kimkins Controversy - Kimkins Scam

My Hindsight Fashion Sense

Doubts.

Many people who looked at the success stories last year on Kimkins.com had doubts. Some people who were in contact with Heidi were treated to the kind of back stories that um, are generally considered unmakeuppable. When I look at all those Russian Bride pictures now, I find it hard to believe that anyone could have swallowed the whole farce. The majority of them are wearing clothing and makeup that, while not bizarre by any means, are not typical of Americans in the 21st century. I guess the craftiness of the fraud involved placement and cropping. This reminds me of the Jessica Seinfeld book about getting your kids to eat their vegetable through clandestine methods.

The lady in the red dress that was supposed to be Kimmer would be comparible to Jessica Seinfeld putting a cherry TOMATO on top of a sundae and serving it to her kid.

Anti-Kimkins Blogs of Note: Kimkins Scam

The blogger over at Kimkins Scam is quite a task master. Heidi Diaz and various affiliates have promoted the Kimkins website in a lot of different corners of the internet. Much of this effort can be swept away with a few well written complaints. There are various links and instructions related to this effort on Kimkins Scam. It is part of a broader effort to have the Kimkins site cease to exist.

The blog also has most of the Russian Bride Pics in one convenient location.

Anti-Kimkins Blogs of Note: Kimkins Exposed

If you discovered the Kimkins controversy recently and you are trying desperately to get your head around the whole thing, Kimkins Exposed should be one of your first stops. One of the most interesting twists in the Kimkins fraud was Heidi’s use of photographs from Russian Bride sites for her success story recreations. The author of Kimkins Exposed has a good compilation of the Russian Brides that have been discovered by many weary eyes.

This particular blog hasn’t been updated since last October. The point of many of the anti-kimkins blogs was to create engaging content that would stay on the front page of search queries for Kimkins. The author accomplished that mission. The nuts and bolts of information gathering related to Kimkins has taken place to a large extent on forums. The author of Kimkins Exposed is legendary in the realm of low carb forums.

Patio Picture Mystery

The ‘patio picture’ that was used to ‘recreate’ the dramatic weight loss of the formerly anonymous Kimmer remains a mystery. I am personally happy to leave it that way. This photo was featured on the landing page of Kimkins.com up until just before the Woman’s World article came out. Heidi Diaz stated at the time that it was a current photograph of her taken by her son. This post is going to be my last mention of this picture unless someone actually can find out who it really is and where it came from.

Photo Hunt

I just realized something about the search to find the source of the older Kimmer after picture. One thing that people should try is to think like Heidi Diaz and punch some terms into a few image searches. Her claim that she just ‘picked a picture’ for the Woman’s World article is plausible. I think this would involve going into double digit pages for a broad search term and making sure the image is from some obscure low traffic site.

The Russian Bride sites weren’t exactly low traffic, but they were one of the last places that the core demographic for Kimkins would have looked.

I think it is also possible that the patio picture was scanned from an actual printed photograph by Heidi Diaz.

Kimkins Patio Picture Search

Finding the Russian Bride pictures was quite a windfall. Finding out the truth about this former after picture has proven more elusive. I have recently noticed a unique idea involving posting the picture on blogs that are not a part of the low carb community in which this controversy has been swirling. I found this image on a recipe blog.

There are some references to the original use of this picture in the series of posts on Slamboard. Heidi had told Catherine that it was a current photograph taken by her son. The clothing style has lead many people to believe that the photo is actually decades old. I believe that I heard video taped testimony by Heidi Diaz to the effect that she does not recall where she got the photograph   Edit: Upon review of the KTLA footage of the deposition it appears that her “I got it off the Internet” statement was about the Woman’s World after picture.

A Review of Diets in Review’s Review of Kimkins

The most dramatic part of that effort to bring the truth out about Kimkins is of course the seemingly unlikely finding of all those Russian Bride pictures. A less obvious but arguably more important effort involved getting the truth all over the first page of a Google search for Kimkins. When everyone was actively blogging as events unfolded and more facts came to light, the Kimkins website itself was just about the only site that was promoting Kimkins on that page. I knew better than to ever think Kimkins.com would lose its spot.

Right now, Diets In Review has the number two spot. It’s not often that you will see a blogger that is happy to have a site ranking higher than their own for a term, but I really am in this case. This is the review site that included a rebuttal from Tippy Toes as an addition to their review. This is a great read for people who are keeping up with current drama related to the woman. The succinct review was very accurate when it came out. The face/ass saving efforts in the interim have generally involved repeatedly tweaking the plan on a point by point basis in response to criticism. There is no plan at this point, and yet there is still a site at which you can pay $60 for the plan, although not with PayPal. I hope lots of people who are searching for an answer to a weight problem find the review first even though it is only number two on the search for Kimkins.

The Good Fight

The effort to bring the Kimkins fraud to light involved a lot of blogs. Some blogs, like this one for instance, were created expressly for that purpose. Other blogs were established blogs that were devoted to the cause until results were achieved and then went back to their regularly scheduled programming. There were also some blogs that may have only mentioned the controversy once or twice.

I would like to say thank you to all the other bloggers.

I would also encourage the people who started blogging because of the Kimkins Controversy to continue blogging about something else. I notice that some bloggers chose to use Blogspot while others went with WordPress. As an experienced blogger, I would recommend using WordPress as a template but registering a domain on your own.

Generating interest in the Kimkins controversy was easy. Generating interest in your own ideas about weight loss or any other topic may prove more difficult. Here is a list of sites that can be useful for generating readers:

Blogexplosion
MyBloglog
Blogcatalog
Technorati
Bloghub
Blogflux
Eatonweb
lsblogs
Globeofblogs
Blogit

I am unfamiliar with a few of those tools. I am not a big fan of Digg, but it is sometimes worth a try if you have a story that you think is of great general interest. Blogrush is a very new thing that some people like and others are not that excited by.

I became aware of a really interesting person by way of her interest in the Kimkins scam. Joy Nash is moderately famous for her Fat Rant and she has a blog that goes by the same name. Go check her out.

Who Is Kimmer?

The tech guys who work so tirelessly on Kimkins.com need to be a bit more thorough with their updating. A link called Who is Kimmer that appears under the main description of the site on the somewhat popular search engine called Google leads to this:

Click on the image to see it full size. I am worried about how people are still being misled by the lady in the red dress. Kimmer AKA Heidi Diaz did NOT lose 198 lbs.

There are no links to these fraudulent pages on the homepage of Kimkins.com, but they still show up in searches. The responsible thing for the webmaster would have been to delete the pages completely.

When is a Review Not a Review?

When it’s Kimkins Review.  A die hard but faceless affiliate of Kimkins updated his/her website on the 15th of November with some vague gobbledygook.  This was obviously done to get the false claim comfortably below the jump on the landing page.

Yes, Kimkins Review still trumpets the false claim that Kimmer lost 198 pounds in 11 months.  This lie was posted on September 18th and as of today it is still on the site.  Whoever is responsible for this must still be getting checks in the mail.  Maybe someone should slip a REALITY CHECK into the next envelope.