It was the headline that grabbed national attention. A fugitive returning to face justice.

No one would mistake the image of the grey-haired, haggard figure that stepped off the plane at Toronto airport and into the waiting handcuffs of the police, as a hardened criminal. David Reiner, after all, was a sixty-one-year-old bookkeeper and by all the accounts of those who knew him, he was a compassionate professional who had never broken a law; a trusted friend to the many people who had hired him to balance their books.

But, David Reiner had gone missing two years before that scene at the airport. One day, he had simply vanished after stealing almost a million dollars from twenty-one non-profit daycare centers. Why Reiner had turned into a thief and then done a Disappearing Act was a mystery. Family and friends were baffled. Maureen Myers, of McMurrich Sprouts daycare center had known Reiner for almost twenty years. "I spend a lot of time thinking about it. Why would somebody do this? Why would somebody rip off children?"

For two years, Reiner was sought by family, by police, and by the media. The fifth estate finally tracked him to Africa where, we discovered, whatever money Reiner had absconded with was long gone. He was destitute, living off whatever his aged mother, friends or relatives could send him from Toronto and what he could scrounge or con from new acquaintances in Kenya and Uganda.

He presented himself to aid workers in Uganda, like Liz Humphreys, as someone who had the contacts to tap for aid money. "He said he'd been working for the Stephen Lewis Foundation…He suggested putting in a proposal to the Stephen Lewis Foundation, he said I'll help you with that, so I said wonderful." But, Humphreys, as almost everyone does who comes into contact with David Reiner, realized too late that Reiner had stolen from her, too.

Stephen Lewis did know David Reiner. Reiner had worked briefly for his Foundation before being fired. No money from the Lewis Foundation was ever taken by Reiner. In Africa, Reiner continued to abuse the notion of his connection to the Foundation by promising to get money for African charities and that outrages Lewis: "Do you know how cruel that is? I sometimes wonder if there isn't a touch of the sociopath here."

The longer he stayed in Africa, the more cons he perpetrated, Reiner increasingly feared that the net of Ugandan justice was about to snare him. When The fifth estate met him, he was desperate to escape Africa and return to Canada. The fifth estate brought Reiner home to face the police and justice, but not before he sat down with Hana Gartner for a candid, at times bewildering, but always fascinating, interview into his motives, his character, and the real story behind his Disappearing Act.