Rich Piana and how he was able to make money

Hello everyone,

I am posting here because there seems to be a big misconception about how Rich Piana made his money and how he afforded rental properties.

There was many false allegations made on the bodybuilding message boards and Rich was way too nice to address a lot of the outright lies made by Ms. Amy Waz (ne: Hellickson). She is not Amy Hellickson. She is Amy Waz and yes she did have a brief relationship with Rich Piana but after the break-up (which is a long story that I do not need to address here…. needless to say it was all lies) They did continue to hook up about twice a year when he was between girlfriends. It was never a long term relationship but a “friend with benefits” on his part… on her part… she was obsessed!

Anyway, this is not about her… it is to clear up some misconceptions about how he could afford what he has and so forth.

I am Rich’s ex-wife and I was married to him for around 17 years. We had a great relationship because we both had the same passion for working out. He had a big dream to be Mr. California and I had been exposed to the likes of Rachel McLish, Gladys Portuguese, et al that fired my interest in looking better.

We met at the gym and both of us found ourselves admiring the other because we each came to the gym to train and not to pick up potential dating partners. It took us about three years seeing each other at the gym but not talking before we ever had a conversation. Needless to say, soon as we spoke, we found that we had a lot of common interests and a lot of common ideals, morals, etc.

When we first started, we both were struggling at low paying jobs and we both took on second jobs to supplement our income. It was Rich that actually looked at our income and sat down and figured out a way that we could cut back on our spending and save for a possible first home.

So we lived in the worst part of North Hollywood in the middle of gangland in a bachelor apartment with two large Akitas paying $500 a month rent. We bought a used Honda CRX for $1500 dollars and shared it to save on more money. Then through a friend of Rich’s we got boxes of the Met-RX meal replacement and with that and buying cases of spaghetti O’s and eggs (from costco)… somehow Rich figured out a way that he could eat a meal at the cost of just under $1.00 for him and each of my meals cost $.70.

We budgeted $20.00 for a one night a week out “cheat meal” that was usually taco bell.

So for several years of working two jobs each. Never going out to movies, eating at home and only going to the gym… we actually were able to save up enough money to buy our first home!

Of course, the market was on our side. The Northridge earthquake just happened and everyone was moving out of the area and the houses were going for dirt cheap!

Somehow, we found a place that was being sold by the owner and we were able to negotiate with him because we didn’t involve a real estate agent in the deal. It was our first home and we weren’t sure how we were going to afford it but we were going to do what we could to make it work!

After several years, my business started taking off and so did his. We were finally comfortable and able to even invest money in stocks.

Then his grandmother and my mother gifted us some money so that we could refinance our house and bring the payments down to $500 a month. This was a 3 bed 2 bath home with a nice backyard that had a $500 mortgage! We had it made.

Time went on and we kept saving and budgeting… it was easy because Rich’s dream was to become Mr. California… it was a dream he had all his life. Since bodybuilding and competing does not allow for much personal life outside of work and the gym… saving money was not an issue.

Finally, we had saved enough to buy our next home. We were able to get a mortgage rate of $1200 a month for a 4 bedroom 3 bathroom with pool home on 12,000 square feet and a 3 car garage! We were in heaven!

As time went by… Rich’s acting was bringing in almost $50,000-$100,000 a year. He was working 7 days a week both daytime and nightime training clients. I was working as a trainer from 5 am until 1 pm then worked as a massage therapist night 6 nights a week.

We were working hard but getting ahead and wanting to find a way to invest our money for future retirement. That is when we decided to buy property in Texas for rentals. We refinanced about 80% of our equity out of this house, took our savings and bought 8 rental properties in Texas.

They were positive cash flow rentals. Even with the added mortgage on our California house we were still able to save and put money away in savings.

Then this is where after 17 years of a happy marriage… things start to go south. Rich meets Amy Waz (pretending to be Amy Hellinbeck now). She had been training at our gym for the last several years and had befriended Rich. I had absolutely no jealousy over this since he was nice to everyone and talked to plenty of people (women and men). I actually introduced myself and became quite friendly with her.

During the time I had known her… I had seen her have several affairs with multiple married men. I even trained some of their wives and the wives did not know about the affairs. It wasn’t my place to judge or get involved in anothe person’s relationship so I kept my mouth shut.

Soon Amy started to become super cozy with me and wanted to start working out with me daily. I didn’t have a problem with that since having a workout buddy is alway a bonus. What I didn’t know at the time is that she had set her sights on Rich.

This is how it went down. I would do workout with her and she would tell me that Rich was saying mean things about me (horrible cruel things) and that she just had to tell me and that I should just divorce him because he was a scumbag and that I am too good to put up with a man talking trash about me… I was confused at first because Rich and I never aired our dirty laundry to anyone. It wasn’t our style. If we were disagreeing and heading over to friend’s house for dinner… the arguement was put on hold until we could be alone to resolve the conflict.

We had made a pact early on not to call each other bad names, yell or talk trash about each other to anyone. We had always kept that promise. So this was very confusing for me.

What I also didn’t know is that she would finish working out with me then find Rich and tell him I was talking trash about him and putting him down and calling him names.

So both Rich and I would go home after the morning of work and be mad at each other and not know why. We both felt we had to protect our “source” because she was on our side…

Needless to say, Rich did fall for Amy’s lies and our marriage did dissolve. However, we are still friends and though things didn’t turn out the way we had planned due to a sociopathic liar… I still think of him as “family” and he treats me the same.

Needless to say, the accusations of Amy’s of abuse was completely exaggerated. She would take Rich’s phones, car keys & block the only exit to the house they shared while she would throw things at him and yell at him for hours and hours. He was helpless because the only way he could leave was by getting physical with her and she told him that she had set up 2 previous boyfriends with assault charges when they left her.

Rich started calling me for advice on how to get away from her… she was stealing his money, she was hiding his guns and threatening to come over and shoot me! He was going out of his mind trying to figure out a way to get away from her.

She was taking his phones while he slept and threatening his female training clients. She was calling me on his phone at 3 am and accusing me of sleeping with my own husband!!! That accusation was actually priceless…. not sure she realized how stupid she sounded?

When the final blow-up happend… I had called his phone and she answered but thought she had hung up… she was hitting herself, stabbing her hands and slamming herself against the walls. Rich was begging her to stop and she was saying that she wanted him to go to jail for wanting to leave her and she wanted to make sure she had enough evidence to put him away!

This time he knew he had to go… he pushed her and ran out the door. Got to a 7/11 and bought a throw away cell phone, called me and I picked him up. She kept texting me and asking me where he was. I told her basically… that if she couldn’t keep her man without threats and violence then she is a pretty sad piece of s**t!

Rich had police on stand-by the next day to pick up his stuff. She filed an assault charge. I had all the evidence though. All the phone records and I was willing to testify to everything I heard. She is truly crazy!

She never paid for ANY of their vacations, dinners or events. He paid for everthing except for the $800 she paid for her previous apartment.

She also stole more than $50,000 cash from him. Probably more than that. That is the amount I can account for. While she lived with him, he kept missing cash that his clients would pay him. He wasn’t sure if it got stolen out of his gym bag or she had been stealing it. To this day, we will never know the full amount of money stolen.

So anyone who is on “team Amy” and thinks she is “hot”… think again… is she “hot” enough to have your whole life ruined and for her to spend the next 5 years on message boards and blogs shredding your reputation as she acts like the poor poor mistreated innocent girl that didn’t know what she was getting herself into?

Compare my story, her story and Rich’s story. Make the decision for yourself.

I have not been on the internet or on any boards but her lies have just put me over the edge! It’s too much and I cannot tolerate this any longer.

Rich has much more tolerance and forgiveness than I do. I tend to be very black and white. You do the right thing or you are not a part of my life!