Wisconsin husband Ryan Borgwardt who faked his kayak death before fleeing overseas with lover is arrested

A Wisconsin husband who faked his own death before fleeing to Eastern Europe with his lover has been arrested, online records show.

Ryan Borgwardt, 45, was booked into the Green Lake County Jail on Tuesday afternoon, according to the Victim Information and Notification Everyday system, but no charges were listed.

The Green Lake County Sheriff’s Office said Tuesday in a social media post that a news conference would be held Wednesday morning to update the Borgwardt case after he purposely flipped his kayak on Green Lake on August 11.

He then dumped his phone and belongings in the water before paddling to safety on an inflatable boat and e-biking more than 50miles to Madison overnight. 

His disappearance devastated his wife and three children and sparked a massive one-month-long manhunt for his body, for which law enforcement wanted to send him a $40,000 bill.

Police learned in October that Borgwardt had crossed the border into Canada a few days after his disappearance and had been communicating with a Uzbek woman who spoke Russian. 

Chief Deputy Matthew Vande Kolk confirmed last month that the two ‘connected online’, but said he could not elaborate further at this stage. 

Sheriff Mark Podoll then said Borgwardt began communicating with authorities on November 11 after disappearing for three months, but that he hadn’t committed to returning to Wisconsin. 

Podoll said police were ‘pulling at his heartstrings’ to come home and suggested Borgwardt could be charged with obstructing the investigation into his disappearance. 

Through Borgwardt’s mistress, the Sheriff’s Office was able to get in contact with the father-of-three and asked him to answer questions only he would know and to film a video of himself, which he did. 

In the November video, Borgwardt – who has not contacted his family since his disappearance – showed off his apartment, telling officers: ‘I am safe, secure, no problems.’ 

But the same cannot be said for his heartbroken family, who are also being supported by the Sheriff’s Office.

‘They are doing okay, that’s probably the best thing you could say,’ Vande Kolk explained.

‘I can’t compare their situation to anything I have ever experienced in law enforcement before, I don’t have any reference.’     

Borgwardt told authorities last month that he faked his death because of ‘personal matters,’ the Podoll said. 

He also told them that he picked Green Lake for his master plan because it’s the deepest in Wisconsin.

The sheriff said at the time that investigators were working to verify Borgwardt’s description of what happened and explained that Borgwardt told authorities that he didn’t expect the search to last more than two weeks.

Authorities spent 54 days looking for the Wisconsin man before announcing on November 8 that they didn’t believe he had drowned in the lake, but rather had faked his own death. 

Investigators revealed that Borgwardt had been talking to a woman in Uzbekistan before he obtained a new passport and a $375,000 life insurance policy in January.

Borgwardt is believed to have used the new passport in Canada a day after he was reported missing.

The scheme was elaborately planned. Borgwardt left his original passport at home when he vanished, and police said he tried to cover his tracks by removing his laptop’s hard drive and wiping his search history clean.

Before his disappearance, he changed all the email addresses linked to his bank accounts and moved money to a foreign bank account.

Borgwardt’s devastated wife, Emily, and their three children, had been grieving their loss, believing for months he was likely dead.

She is now being urged to join support groups for women with ‘runaway husbands’ as her friends and community rally around her.

She and Borgwardt celebrated their 22nd wedding anniversary in July 2024.