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.
Evolution Metals LLC had originally planned to purchase Critical Mineral Recovery along with four Korean companies as part of its push to build a domestic critical-materials supply chain. That plan unraveled after Critical Mineral Recovery's 225,000-square-foot Fredericktown, Missouri facility was destroyed by a catastrophic fire in October 2024 — an event Hoodline covered at the time as the EPA ramped up air testing in the area following evacuations and a three-mile fish kill in the Little St. Francis River. Wilcox's team has suggested the split with Watkins was caused by that fire, though the deal, which had been set to close in July 2025, ultimately fell apart after Watkins discovered Wilcox's full legal name was William David Wilcox, the magazine reported. Evolution Metals officially terminated the Critical Mineral Recovery acquisition in July 2025 and recorded a full $9.0 million allowance for credit losses on advance notes it had provided the facility.
Company Faces Its Own Legal and Financial Storm
Wilcox built his career managing derivatives trading teams at Deutsche Bank in London and New York before founding Evolution Metals LLC in 2015, according to background material about his career. He now leads a company facing mounting legal and financial pressure. Global law firm Jones Day sued Evolution Metals & Technologies in the Superior Court of Fulton County, Georgia in April, claiming it is owed roughly $3.9 million in unpaid fees for legal work performed during the business combination, and a Georgia judge denied the company's motion to dismiss that suit this month. Evolution Metals' attorneys have argued that Jones Day botched the job it was hired to do, and the company has also moved to dismiss one count of the firm's lawsuit.
Per the same account, Evolution Metals Corporation has separately been sued by an investor and a former executive who said the company owed them money, and Wilcox himself was charged with violating an order of protection obtained by the mother of his child — a case to which he has pleaded not guilty and which is set for trial in December. Wilcox has also filed records requests about calls to law enforcement made by the mother of his child. Meanwhile, Evolution Metals & Technologies stock, which hit a high above $21 in January when the company went public on Nasdaq, has since fallen to around $3.30.
Going-Concern Warning Adds to the Turmoil
The financial strain runs deeper than the stock slide. In an SEC filing disclosed on August 17, Evolution Metals & Technologies reported a net loss of $452.2 million on just $3.5 million in revenue for the six months ending June 30, warning that its operating losses raise substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern, according to the filing. The company registered 5.4 million common shares for resale in July to support a $100 million convertible debenture facility arranged with institutional investor YA II PN, Ltd., a move aimed at shoring up liquidity.
Watkins, meanwhile, is no stranger to high-profile legal fights. He has previously represented Capitol rioter Jacob Chansley, known as the “QAnon Shaman,” and the ex-husband in the 2018 blackmail investigation involving former Missouri Governor Eric Greitens. In the current dispute, a partial transcript of the call between Diaz-Silva and Rojas shows that some of the alleged defamatory statements were phrased as questions rather than assertions, a detail that could factor into how the Idaho case proceeds under Idaho Code § 5-219(5), which sets strict statutory standards for defamation claims involving malicious intent.
Regulatory Cleanup Continues in Fredericktown
Separately from the litigation, the Fredericktown site at the center of the collapsed acquisition remains under state environmental oversight. Critical Mineral Recovery submitted a site-specific permit application under the Missouri Clean Water Law to the Missouri Department of Natural Resources in March, seeking approval for long-term stormwater and environmental runoff management nearly a year and a half after the fire forced evacuations and prompted EPA air monitoring for toxic compounds. It remains a lingering reminder of the deal that never came together, and of a corporate transition that has since spawned lawsuits stretching from Georgia to Idaho.
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