Billionaire found dead in private lake north of Spokane

Daniel Reiner, an investor of companies worth billions of dollars, was found dead last month in a Pend Oreille County Lake he owned with his wife.

Pend Oreille County Sheriff officers first responded to Trout Lake, west of Fertile Valley Road, at around 8 p.m. on Aug. 30 after a person was reported missing.

With the help of the Spokane County dive team, the body of the 72-year-old Reiner was recovered from the roughly 95-acre lake at around 3 p.m. the following day, according to Pend Oreille County Sheriff Glenn Blakeslee.

Blakeslee said an investigation is pending autopsy reports.

“We of course look if there are any signs of obvious trauma or anything along those lines that would be obvious to say there is foul play involved,” he said. “We didn’t see any in this case, so then we rely on the medical examiner in the coroner’s office to give us a manner and cause of death.”

According to an email from Dolly Hunt, county coroner, an autopsy report was completed on Sept. 5, and its findings, including the manner of death, are forthcoming.

The Reiner estate includes about 30 properties, some 1,837 acres and a sprawling mansion on the shore of Trout Lake, which Blakeslee said reaches about 200 feet deep.

“He owns a large piece of property there, so everything that goes on the property is pretty much not visible,” he said. “There’s such a distance to any neighbors from the lake itself or from any of the structures that he has there.”

Despite his grandiose home, Reiner was a humble and loyal man, according to friend and professional counterpart Tom Simpson.

“Despite his success, if you saw Dan walking around downtown Spokane, he would have just blended in,” Simpson said. “He was a very down-to-Earth individual.”

In addition to being an angel investor himself, Simpson is the CEO of Ignite Northwest, which mentors and funds local startups. Ignite is located alongside Indaba Coffee in downtown Spokane at 518 W. Riverside Ave., a property part-owned by Reiner.

But the two investors’ relationship preceded their involvement in the Spokane location.

“I first met Dan in the late ’90s when he moved to Spokane and was trying to get acclimated to the local community,” Simpson said. “At the time, he had already been a very successful entrepreneur and company builder.”

Reiner and his wife, Rhonda, purchased their Eastern Washington lake house in 1998, according to Pend Oreille County property records.

The same year, Packet Engines Inc., a Spokane-based tech company that manufactured hardware for personal computers, was sold to French company Alcatel SA for $325 million in 1998, according to Wired magazine.

Simpson, an investor and board member of Packet Engines, introduced Reiner to Packet founder Bernard Daines.

“Dan and Bernard became acquainted, then when Bernard started World Wide Packets, Dan became a major investor in the company,” Simpson said.

Based in Spokane Valley, World Wide Packets was purchased by Maryland-based telecommunications company Ciena Corp. in 2008 for $290 million, according to Spokesman-Review reports.

“Dan was very involved in the success, growth and exit of World Wide Packets,” Simpson said.

Reiner’s resume includes time as CEO of Optical Devices Inc., when he oversaw the merger of the company with Hoechst AG to create Enhanced Imaging Technologies Inc., a maker of cardiology equipment, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The company was then purchased by Marquette Electronics for $300 million in 1993.

In 2008, Reiner co-founded Stemcentrx, a San Francisco-based biotech company that developed experimental cancer treatments, including the drug Rova-T, according to a publication from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The company was sold to Chicago-based AbbVie Inc. in 2016 for approximately $5.8 billion in cash and stock, plus up to $4 billion in additional milestone payments, according to its website.

Reiner is also an owner and partner of numerous golf courses and resorts, including Granite Bay Golf Club near Sacramento, Pebble Beach Golf Links south of San Jose, Cabo del Sol near Cabo San Lucas and Club Corp, a Dallas-based corporation that owns and operates more than 200 courses worldwide, according to its website.

“He was just a remarkable individual and probably one of the best deal makers I have ever met. He was a mentor to me and a mentor to a lot of people,” Simpson said.

“It’s a great loss to a lot of us who know him well and to the community.”