After staging a kayak fishing accident on Green Lake, Wisconsin and leaving the United States to be with a woman he met online, Ryan Borgwardt was sentenced to 89 days in jail for obstructing an officer.
Initially, Borgwardt was recommended a 45-day jail term but upon the recommendation of the judge the term was increased to 89 days; the same number of days between when Borgwardt was declared missing and when he was located in the Eastern European country Georgia.
Wisconsin man who faked kayak fishing accident to pursue woman he met online sentenced to jail time
Borgwardt, reported missing in August 2024, was initially presumed drowned from the time his overturned kayak and fishing gear were found until he was located in Georgia in November 2024 and put in contact with authorities by a Russian-speaking woman. In a statement to the court Borgwardt shared that he deeply regrets his actions and the pain caused to his family, including his wife and three teenage children, and to his friends, who had presumed him drowned and spent months mourning.
Borgwardt initially pleaded not guilty to the misdemeanor but under a plea deal changed his plea to no contest. In addition to the 89 days in jail, Borgwardt also agreed to pay $30,000 in restitution to law enforcement to cover the resources spent trying to locate him, the Associated Press reported. The judge made it clear that Borgwardt was not being charged for faking his death, rather his misdemeanor charge of obstructing an officer.
Borgwardtโs disappearance led to a 58-day search and recovery effort that included dive teams and sonar equipment and the attempts to recover Borgwardt, then presumed drowned, spanned several months. Search teams scoured Green Lake and found Borgwardtโs kayak, fishing equipment, his life jacket, phone and wallet. When by mid-October there was still no trace of Borgwardt himself, authorities determined it was time to expand their search beyond Green Lake.
Authorities soon found that in January 2024 Borgwardt had purchased a $370,000 life insurance policy. Borgwardtโs laptop showed search queries on moving funds to foreign banks and records of communications with a woman in Uzbekistan. Police also found that Borgwardtโs passport had been checked by Canadian authorities shortly after his disappearance.
In court, Green Lake County District Attorney Gerise LaSpisa stated that Borgwardt had reversed his vasectomy and applied for a replacement passport before faking his kayak fishing accident and leaving the country. LaSpisa also stated that Borgwardt had been regularly communicating with the woman in Uzbekistan online professing his love and desire to create a new life with her. LaSpisa noted that in his research of how to fake a drowning Borgwardt chose Green Lake for its depth and his belief that a body would not surface.
โWhat defendant didnโt count on was the great concern and dedication of the Green Lake County Community and the dogged resolve of our law enforcement,โ LaSpisa said in the court room.
Borgwardtโs returned to Wisconsin after faking kayak fishing accident to take responsibility for actions
The initial search for Borgwardt began on August 12, 2025 when his capsized kayak and fishing gear were discovered on Green Lake. In November 2024, a Russian-speaking woman contacted Green Lake County authorities and connected them with Borgwardt who shared a clip of himself stating the date and time, and that he was in his apartment โsafe, secure, no problem.โ
Borgwardt went on to later share with police how he faked his death, sharing that he paddled out with a small inflatable paddlecraft along with the kayak he left overturned on Green Lake, capsized his kayak and paddled the inflatable craft to shore where he then rode an e-bike heโd previously stashed to Madison, Wisconsin before taking a bus to Detroit and crossing into Canada, from where he eventually travelled to Georgia.
In December, Borgwardt returned to Wisconsin and was charged with a misdemeanor crime, which his attorney Erik Johnson emphasized was a non-extraditable offense.
โIf he didnโt want to come back; he didnโt need to come back,โ Johnson said in court, adding that Borgwardt chose to come back to the United States in order to take responsibility for his actions and make amends.
According to an Associated Press report in December 2024 Emily Borgwardt, wife of Ryan Borgwardt, filed a petition seeking legal separation stating that the marriage is โirretrievably broken.โ The couple had been married for 22 years and Emily sought sole custody of their children.
