St. Louis attorney Al Watkins and his ex-wife, Carolina Diaz-Silva, are being sued in federal court in Idaho over a phone call conducted almost entirely in Spanish between Diaz-Silva and a Peruvian domestic worker employed by William David Wilcox, executive chairman of Evolution Metals & Technologies Corp. The suit accuses Diaz-Silva of publishing false statements about Wilcox, including allegations that he abused women, held the mother of his child captive for months on a ranch in Ketchum, Idaho, and trafficked the domestic worker, Doris Rojas, into the United States to force her to work against her will.
According to St. Louis Magazine, Diaz-Silva made the call to Rojas in Hailey, Idaho, and the lawsuit alleges she called Wilcox a kidnapper and told Rojas to leave his Idaho home. Diaz-Silva told the magazine she was motivated by concern for Rojas and said Watkins had alerted her that Rojas may have been trafficked to Idaho and had given her Rojas’ phone number. “I have nothing to do with this, and I have not defamed anyone,” Diaz-Silva said, according to the outlet’s report. She also said she had forgotten about the call until she was served a subpoena.
Watkins, for his part, denies the call was defamatory and says his ex-wife acted out of concern for a woman he reasonably believed to be in danger. He told the magazine that a process server delivered the lawsuit to a person preparing to walk Diaz-Silva’s dog, and that he plans to file a motion to dismiss the suit based on improper service. The suit argues that the disruption caused by the call would make Wilcox’s custody case harder to carry out, and that Diaz-Silva sought to disrupt his household stability; that custody matter is playing out separately in Idaho state court.
A Deal That Fell Apart Amid Fire and Fallout
The defamation case did not emerge in isolation. It is, per the St. Louis Magazine account, the second piece of litigation tying together Watkins, Wilcox, and Diaz-Silva, and it followed the acrimonious breakdown of Watkins’ professional relationship with Wilcox’s company. Watkins had been slated to become chief legal officer of the new public entity, while Rob Feldman was to serve as co-CEO — but when Evolution Metals & Technologies went public in January 2026 after completing its SPAC merger with Welsbach Technology Metals Acquisition Corp., both men were left out…