I see. The moderator listings are updated once a day I think. This seemed to happen more quickly than that, so unless it was just plain luck on when it was updated, I don't think it's that.
I updated my post with their comment, they may not be directly going through SEDE as there is an API that can be used. I know there is a bot called charcoal that sniffs out bad posts etc and auto reports them for example that uses the API.
Ahh thanks! So I assume they were just looking for moderators rather than employees.
That's where the 1 rep comes into play: the only way to get a diamond without rep is employment.
There are IIRC a few minor exceptions, but those are for smaller communities just out of Area 51 AFAIK and those still apply to users that have shown extensive involvement in those communities. That said those users still have more than 1 rep in all cases AFAIK.