from a philippine jail in 2001. rain charges, dropped. when we last spoke to carl, he told us dennis is a free man. rumored to be living in malaysia, and he has never been charged with fraud allegations made against him by carl and the other investors. the teacher got what he wanted. revenge. not just for how he was allegedly cheated. george rombach said carl had to hunt down dennis. it became carl s way of dealing with the loss of his father. he couldn t get on with the rest of his life without setting that straight. i am pleased he was able to get his life back and exonerate his name. maybe it goes back to that loney boy, who dreamed the pirates and treasure.
reporter: than in actually finding any treasure. exactly. reporter: the artifacts karl had seen from the various ships and digs? according to kirk, they were planted there by dennis himself. it is called salting the site. it was, it now seemed, the teacher all a big lie. the adventure, the dreams come true, the friendship with dennis standefer. for that, karl, completely overtaken by his dreams, had left his own father behind, in his time of need. ever want to be able to say you were right, dad, after all? yeah, i would. i never had that opportunity. reporter: what do you do about a thing like that? i took it out on myself a lot. i mean, i was depressed. and then it became, you know, more of an anger because i felt that standefer had taken advantage of the situation. he knew the situation with my
happen. i was ready to give up. i said if they don t get him today, i m out. reporter: as time ticked by, karl became convinced that dennis had escaped once more. i was due back at school in about ten days. i was out of money. i was frustrated. and i just reporter: maybe you should just give up this whole i said, this is enough. i mean, this was important to me. but i did give it a real good shot. i gave it an honest shot. reporter: over a year of near misses and phantom sightings like some big foot always on the move. and all this flashed through karl s mind as he waited. how would this end? coming up, would standefer get arrested or get away? i really wanted to sit down and confront him. and say, you know, why did you do this?
and he could have dropped out at this point and let police handle it from here. but karl pushed ahead, feeling he had to do this himself, convinced that only he could find standefer. and an investor told me that dennis will tell you he s going up north if he s going south. it s always misinformation. reporter: ryll called harold karaka, who began working the phones and e-mail. and seemed to hit paydirt. we tracked him through malaysia, through the hotels he ripped off there by not paying his hotel bills or phone bills. reporter: the bills and other documents like this were clear evidence that standefer had been there. but the trail was cold once again and was going nowhere. until one more victim heard about karl s hunt. and called him from jakarta, indonesia. like the philippines and malaysia, a nation in the south asia sea. he called me and said, he s over here. he said, i didn t see him. but i missed him by about two hours but i got a business card. it says dennis austin. t
him as he casually joked with and charm ed them. police refused to let him go. he got angry. i had trouble with americans who tried to kill me. police allege that his visa papers were not in order. used that to lock him up on the spot. then, two days later, as he was led from the police station holding cell to the jail, carl got his chance to go face to face with dennis. hope you enjoyed killing me. the one that started carl on his- i reported him to the fbi. for selling drugs.