Ryan Borgwardt is convicted in Green Lake County court, Aug. 26, 2025. PC: Fox 11 Online
GREEN LAKE (WTAQ-WLUK) — Ryan Borgwardt was convicted of one misdemeanor count of obstruction for faking his own death on Green Lake last summer and traveling to Europe to be with a woman he met online.
Borgwardt, 45, who was a married father of three at the time of the incident, pleaded no contest at a plea/sentencing hearing Tuesday afternoon.
“I deeply regret the actions that I did that night and all the pain that I caused my family and friends,” Borgwardt said when given a chance to address the court.
Although the joint sentencing recommendation between the state and the defense was 45 days in the county jail, the judge sentenced Borgwardt to 89 days — a number with significant meaning behind it.
“The court notes there were 89 days from the date the defendant was declared missing on Aug. 12 until the email from the sheriff’s department to the defendant on Nov. 8. It was during these 89 days that the defendant faked his death,” said Judge Mark Slate.
He obstructed law enforcement for a total of 89 days. He could have come forward before that time, but he decided not to… The court determines that the appropriate time for the defendant to spend in the county jail is the length of time he allowed his deception to continue.
Borgwardt has already paid the required $30,000 in restitution, which will be split between the Green Lake County Sheriff’s Office and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources to cover a portion of their costs for the investigation into his disappearance.
Online court records show Borgwardt moved to Appleton in January after his wife filed for “annulment/legal separation” in Dodge County.
Attorney Gerise Laspisa, who represented the state, called Borgwardt’s actions “a crime of dishonesty.”
“Any criminal charge, conviction and sentence that this court today hands down will not be able to come close to undoing the incredible damage that this defendant, by his premeditated, selfish actions, has done not only to his family, but our community,” Laspisa said.
While a misdemeanor conviction, along with [89] days in jail and payment of a portion of the costs expended by our law enforcement to discover his devastating act, cannot begin to fix the damage he has done, it tells our community that we will hold individuals accountable and it may also act as a deterrent to future destructive plans such as this. Those that may wish to disappear are on notice that our community will not give up after a few days. We will continue to dig and, if we find that a crime has occurred, we will work to hold you accountable.
Attorney Erik Johnson, who represented Borgwardt, said his client should be given credit for returning to the United States on his own accord.
“I think he’s made some really good and positive decisions after those events. All of the decisions boil down to one thing, and that is that he’s here taking responsibility for his actions,” said Johnson. “He came back from Europe to take responsibility for his actions. I think that that’s worth noting as well, because this was a non-extraditable misdemeanor. If he did not want to come back, he didn’t need to come back. He did and he wanted to make amends, and that’s why he returned.”
Borgwardt was first reported missing in August 2024 after a kayaking trip on Green Lake.
“We now know that in the late evening of August 11th of 2024, the defendant arrived in Green Lake, Wisconsin, and put in motion the final steps to his plan of faking his death so that he could disappear from his everyday life of being a husband and father in Wisconsin and realize his selfish and self-centered plan to travel overseas to be with a woman that he met online,” said Laspisa. “He regularly communicated with the woman, professing his love and desire to create a new life with her. He reversed his vasectomy.”
According to the defendant, his entire plan to fake his death — to devastate his family in order to serve his own selfish desires — hinged on him dying on the lake and selling his death to the world. His words.
For months, local, state and federal authorities searched for Borgwardt, believing he had drowned.
But in November, sheriff’s officials made the shocking announcement that Borgwardt had faked his death and traveled to Europe after communicating with a woman from Uzbekistan. Officials say the pair eventually settled in the country of Georgia, where Borgwardt got a job and an apartment.
The runaway sent a video to the Green Lake County Sheriff’s Office to prove he was alive and safe and wasn’t being held against his will.
According to the criminal complaint, Borgwardt confirmed to law enforcement he intentionally planted physical evidence in an attempt to fake his death. He told investigators he had been looking at weather reports, planning when he was going to stage his disappearance.
RYAN stated on August 11, 2024, he woke up in the morning and went to church with his family. After church he came home and went to his shop to prepare. RYAN stated that at some point he did go home for a little while and load up a few more things.
Preparations included purchasing an e-bike and a life jacket, a hat and a backpack.
Authorities also discovered that Borgwardt had obtained a second passport, replaced the hard drive on his laptop, cleared his web browser history, synced his laptop to iCloud and changed the email addresses associated with his financial accounts on the day of his disappearance. Investigators found records of inquiries about moving funds to foreign banks, communication with a woman believed to be from Uzbekistan, a new $375,000 life insurance policy and a purchased airline gift card.
In the complaint, Borgwardt said he got to Green Lake around 10 p.m. He parked his van near Dodge Memorial Park and stashed the e-bike, helmet and backpack in the tree line near his van. He took his tacklebox, fishing pole, net, duffel bag and inflatable raft and got in his kayak.
RYAN stated he had to come up with a plausible story how he got out into the middle of the lake… During the interview RYAN made multiple comments that he had to make this believable so that everyone, including law enforcement, would think he drowned in the lake. RYAN stated that once he got out to where he thought the deepest part was, he tossed the phone in the lake. RYAN began inflating the raft and hopped in the raft. RYAN then flipped over the kayak.
Borgwardt took the e-bike to Madison and from there took a bus to Toronto, Canada. The complaint describes how he had issues getting through customs without a driver’s license, saying Borgwardt felt like the Canadian Border Patrol “were suspicious of him.”
He had no working phone at this point because it had died “after he sent a message to [the adult female he was going to meet with].”
Borgwardt flew to Paris, then boarded a flight to a country in Asia. It was there the adult female he was meeting came to pick him up, and the pair spent a few days together at a hotel. Investigators say he ultimately ended up living in Georgia, a country at the intersection of Europe and Asia.
RYAN made comments that he had spent a great deal of time researching how to disappear… RYAN stated that he researched other individuals that had successfully disappeared recently… He researched lake deaths and researched how deep a body has to be without resurfacing. RYAN research a lot of other things in regard to his disappearance as well, such as travel, how to take money over to another country, and different ways he could leave the country with leaving a minimum number of clues as possible. RYAN stated, “everything hinged on me dying in the lake.” RYAN also stated the “whole idea was to sell the death.”
The criminal complaint says Borgwardt “knew at some point” officials discovered he was not dead, but he “wanted to make that as long of a time as possible.”
“RYAN stated even if we found out that he was not deceased, he wanted to add as many layers as he possibly could so that he could not be found or tracked,” the complaint states.
Borgwardt would check news reports periodically while he was out of the country. He expected authorities to give up the search in Green Lake after a few weeks, and when he received an email from the sheriff’s office, his “heart hit the floor.”
The complaint goes on to say that authorities were able to recover from his laptop a photo of the woman he went to Europe to meet, and “knew that he made a mistake, the one mistake that he couldn’t make.”
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