GREEN LAKE, Wis. — A Wisconsin man who faked his own drowning and left his wife and three children for Eastern Europe willingly returned to the U.S. after four months and was charged Wednesday with obstructing an intense lake search by staging a phony tragedy.
Ryan Borgwardt, who had been living in the country of Georgia, appeared in a Green Lake County court a day after flying home.
A judge entered a not-guilty plea on his behalf and set bond at $500 for the obstruction charge, a misdemeanor, though Borgwardt has to pay only if he violates the conditions of his release from jail.
The 45-year-old said he would represent himself, but a court-appointed lawyer is also possible.
Earlier Wednesday, Green Lake County Sheriff Mark Podoll said Borgwardt “came back on his own” Tuesday because of family.
Last month, Podoll said Borgwardt began communicating with authorities on Nov. 11 after disappearing for three months but hadn’t committed to returning to Wisconsin. Podoll said police were “pulling at his heartstrings” to come home, but would not discuss the conversations that led to Borgwardt flying back to the U.S. and turning himself in at the Green Lake County Justice Center.
Borgwardt told authorities last month that he faked his death because of “personal matters,” the sheriff had said. He told them that in mid-August he traveled about 50 miles from his home in Watertown to Green Lake, where he overturned his kayak, dumped his phone and then paddled an inflatable boat to shore. He said he picked that lake because it’s the deepest in Wisconsin, authorities said.
After leaving the lake, he rode an electric bike about 70 miles through the night to Madison. From there, he said he took a bus to Detroit, then boarded a bus to Canada and got on a plane, authorities said.
An analysis of a laptop — it was not clear whose — revealed a digital trail that shows Borgwardt had planned to head to Europe and tried to mislead investigators, officials said.
The laptop’s hard drive had been replaced and the browsers had been cleared on the day Borgwardt disappeared, Podoll said in a news release in November. Investigators found passport photos, inquiries about moving funds to foreign banks and communication with a woman from Uzbekistan. They also discovered that Borgwardt took out a $375,000 life insurance policy in January.
Law enforcement personnel made contact with Borgwardt on Nov. 11. He sent them a video of himself wearing an orange T-shirt and not smiling. He said in the video that he was in his apartment and briefly panned the camera but mostly showed just a door and bare walls. He did not say where he was.
The sheriff’s office has said the search for Borgwardt’s body, which lasted more than a month, cost at least $35,000. The sheriff said that Borgwardt told authorities that he didn’t expect the search to last more than two weeks.
Richmond writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Ed White in Detroit contributed to this report.
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