Investor Trips Up Treasure Hunter

Vengeance probably wasn’t very high on your to-do list this holiday season. But it was for Karl S. Ryll, an otherwise unassuming El Monte teacher.

Instead of spending his time around the punch bowl, Ryll spent part of his Christmas break halfway across the world, making sure that a treasure hunter named Dennis A. Standefer remained behind bars in a Jakarta, Indonesia, jail.

For more than two years, Ryll, 39, has dedicated his energy to tracking Standefer. He and at least a dozen other fellow investors claim Standefer, a 55-year-old Santa Monica College dropout, bilked them out of hundreds of thousands of dollars for sunken treasures and exotic merchandise.

Last summer, Ryll’s effort bore fruit when he helped Indonesian authorities find and arrest Standefer on unrelated local charges. His Christmas trip was the most recent episode in a two-year saga that some observers liken to Captain Ahab’s obsession with the Great White Whale.

“It is one thing to be a disgruntled investor, but can you imagine anyone chasing their stockbroker around the world?” said Donna Klipstein, Standefer’s former wife, who says her ex-spouse has done nothing to deserve Ryll’s wrath.

Other investors applaud Ryll’s efforts, calling him a “pit bull.”

Vowed Ryll, an English teacher from Valle Lindo High School, prior to boarding a plane the day before Christmas: “I gave up a few years of my life to pursue Dennis and I’m not going to let him get away again.”

The allegations against Standefer are open to dispute, given the murky and highly speculative nature of treasure-hunting. Despite investor complaints, federal authorities have declined to charge Standefer with fraud. His supporters, like his ex-wife, say he’s an honest man who has been unfairly hounded.

Yet one thing is certain: Largely because of Ryll, Standefer now sits in an Indonesian jail. According to interviews with foreign police, U.S. government officials and former investors, Ryll’s single-minded pursuit took him from the portals of cyberspace to the bazaars of Jakarta.

“He [Ryll] is the reason Standefer is in jail--no one else,” said Special Investigator Mario Garcia, with the Philippines’ National Bureau of Investigation’s Interpol division.

Before beginning his pursuit, Ryll was just one of a bevy of dreamers who threw in with Standefer to mine doubloons from shipwrecks. The teacher met Standefer nine years ago at a seminar in Pasadena’s Huntington Ritz-Carlton Hotel.

Those who attended say Standefer gave a mesmerizing account of attempts to recover the Central America, which was wrecked off North Carolina in 1857 with a bellyful of gold.

Although Standefer mentioned that he was involved in litigation over the shipwreck, he didn’t fully explain that it cast a shadow over his claims, say attendees. In fact, the U.S. Court of Appeals, 4th Circuit, in Virginia would eventually rule that Standefer had no claim to any of the tons of gold, valued at half a billion dollars.

No matter. Two years after the Ritz-Carlton meeting, Ryll said Standefer sought him out with an offer: Salvage cargo from a Japanese World War II boat.

“I was a substitute teacher in Riverside without a lot of prospects and he comes along and offers to fulfill a boyhood dream,” said Ryll.

Ryll and his friends eventually anted up $90,000 for a treasure-hunting expedition off Camiguin Island in the Philippines. It netted nothing. Ryll then said he took up a $15,000 collection to get Standefer out of jail for overstaying his visa.

But Ryll said his payments came to a halt with $8,600 he sent to Standefer for an ancient dagger and precious metals. The items never came, prompting Ryll to warn Standefer via e-mail that he would go to police. Instead, days later, the police came to him in April 1998.

South Pasadena police searched Ryll’s apartment after receiving an anonymous fax accusing him of using a date-rape drug on students. Police dropped the investigation for lack of evidence, but Ryll traced the fax to a Malaysian hotel room where Standefer was staying.

That, said Ryll, was “the breaking point.” He decided to get even for the $30,000 he had lost.

First Ryll, through law enforcement authorities, unearthed a 1984 federal mail fraud conviction Standefer had in Northern California. Court records obtained by The Times show the conviction stemmed from Standefer’s fund-raising attempts for an earlier “joint-venture treasure hunt.”

Meanwhile, Ryll used the Internet to tap into a network of disgruntled investors looking for Standefer. Investors like Harold Karaka, a former city of Orange detective who was fuming over $10,000 he gave Standefer for artifacts that never arrived.

“I pledged to chase Dennis to the end of the Earth,” Karaka said in a recent interview.

The pair, who met in early 1998, filed a raft of complaints with numerous government agencies, which directed the men to the FBI.

Special Agent Kevin Caudle said the agency investigated the claims but the U.S. attorney’s office declined to prosecute. “[Standefer] can say it’s a poor business venture, not fraud,” Caudle said.

Undeterred, Ryll contacted Standefer’s partner in a Las Vegas-based Web site that sold antiquities. He convinced the partner, Ed Jones, to shut down the site.

Meanwhile, an obliging Internet provider tipped off Ryll that Standefer had been accessing the Web site from Jakarta, Indonesia.

Ryll said that bit of information prompted at least three fact-finding trips to South Asia, more than 7,000 miles away. The first, during the 1998 school spring break, resulted in the discovery of a photo in which Standefer is standing with his arm around a teenage girl in a bar.

On a return trip last summer, Ryll said, he eventually found himself on a tiny Philippine island, knocking on the door of a wooden shack. The girl, now a woman, came out and confirmed that she had met Standefer at a nearby resort when she was 15.

Ricardo Diaz, a supervisor with the Philippines’ National Bureau of Investigation, confirmed that Ryll steered the women to local police, who then issued an arrest warrant for Standefer for the capital crime of child rape.

When Ryll alerted police that Standefer might be in Jakarta, Diaz said the agency immediately wired the rape warrant to the neighboring country and gave the teacher a copy to hand deliver.

Three days later, on Aug. 21, police arrested Standefer, said Jakarta Police Sgt. Dwie Atmoko. He was wanted in Jakarta as well for overstaying his visa by 10 months, he said.

“Mr. Karl Ryll helped us,” Atmoko said of finding Standefer.

Standefer faces five years in Indonesia for the visa charges--plus extradition to the Philippines.

Ryll was on hand to relish Standefer’s downfall, videotaping his nemesis as police walked him to a Jakarta jail.

“What do you have to say to American television?” Ryll shouted as he thrust his camera at Standefer, the tape shows.

“I’m dead and you know it,” Standefer yelled back. “I hope you enjoy it. I hope you enjoy killing me. You’re a liar and murderer. . . . Thanks, pal.”

U.S. Consul General Tony Edson declined to comment. “We specifically discussed your interest in his case with Mr. Standefer, who has confirmed his desire that we not discuss his case with the press,” he wrote in an e-mail last week.

Jakarta police also declined to make Standefer available. But in a tape of their initial interview with him, Standefer blames his plight on people who conspired to kill him and poach on his projects.

Ryll said his motive for the hunt, which cost him as much as he lost on treasure-hunting, was purely personal.

To prove the point, there’s the memento he got the night Standefer was arrested: a tattoo over his right shoulder blade showing a serpent wrapped around a sword. The bearded face on the snake? Standefer’s.

“I finally have Dennis behind me,” said the high school teacher, “and I aim to keep it that way.”