started out investing small amounts of money, just for the fun of it. but they insist standefer kept them on the hook. kirk shaffer says dennis knew just how. it is alluring to think that you can go and you can find some treasure. and people do do it on a rare occasion. reporter: they want to believe. they want to believe, exactly. reporter: karl tracked down more investors and spread the word about what he says standefer did. he was determined to shut dennis down. so, you wanted to make sure everybody knew he was a crook. yes. i wanted to cut off his money supply. and it is like, okay. then what is he going to do? reporter: in the meantime, you went back to teaching and getting your life in order. yes, i went back to teaching. reporter: he quietly went back to his quiet pasadena life. and that would have been the end of the story of dennis standefer and karl ryll. the teacher was through with the treasure hunter and never thought he would see or hear from him again. th
his mission, find the girl from the photos and find out how old she was. this search would be different than trying to prove some fraud charge. but for karl ryll, there was no turning back. kirk shaffer told him where in the southern philippines dennis would hang out. after a few days of asking questions and passing around her photo, karl found the girl. she was now 20. but was underage, she said, when the relationship with standefer began. and beyond being too young for a relationship with an adult, she said, something happened to her that could land dennis in far deeper trouble. she claimed she had been sexually assaulted by standefer five years earlier. and now, she wanted to press charges against him for rape. karl took her to the local prosecutors office. he heard the story. and he said, i ll file charges against this guy for rape. reporter: karl had now uncovered something about dennis standefer far more grave than anything he had been pursuing. and he could have dropped out
out tens of thousands of dollars, his childhood dreams destroyed, california teacher karl ryll was now warning others about treasure hunter dennis standefer. a man he says who conned him, betrayed him, at the very time karl s father was dieing. my main goal was to make sure no one else got ripped off by him. and so, i figured i could at least do that. reporter: using e-mails and phone calls, ryll contacted everybody he could find connected to the treasure hunter, a blitz designed to cut off standefer s money supply. i was finding people that went back 30 years that he had ripped off. reporter: convinced his efforts had succeeded, karl sunk slowly back into an otherwise ordinary life, believing his bitter experience with standefer
he was now on a hunt for revenge, against dennis standefer, someone he says who took thousands of dollars from him in a treasure hunting scheme and then tried to silence him by faxing career-ending allegations to karl s school district. he thought this would probably finish me off. reporter: instead? it had the opposite effect. reporter: on the surface, teacher ryll seemed no match for the well-connected, wily standefer. other investors, like george rombach and gene hasenbeck, said they, too, had been burned by the treasure hunter were worried. karl was becoming a friend, they told him, leave it all behind, move on. i didn t think karl had much of a chance. dennis has obviously been doing this for a long time. reporter: did you, gene? i tried to talk him out of it. i said, karl, you re at a low point here. you don t have the money to be throwing after this. reporter: and karl began to have second thoughts himself. how would he do this? where would he even start?
had finally come to an end. but then, a knock at his apartment door. it was a police detective. and he had with him this piece of paper, an anonymous fax, charging karl ryll with keeping large amounts of date rape drugs in his apartment. and the fax also said i was giving these to my female students in my classroom. reporter: could you think of a more serious no. i m not tenured. and any hint of any impropriety whether it s true or not, i mean, that would follow you the rest of your life. reporter: career would be over? yeah. reporter: karl says as soon as he saw that fax, he knew who it came from. what did you think as you read that letter? i was shaking. because i m, like, i knew right away standefer did it. i told the police, i know who did this. the police questioned karl, searched his apartment, left without finding any evidence.