You know you’ve done something special when it could win you Husband AND Father of the Year. A 45-year-old man from Wisconsin was in court this week after he faked his own death, abandoned his wife and three kids, and fled the country to go be with his mistress in Eastern Europe.
If you haven’t heard about this, it happened one year ago this month. Ryan Borgwardt made it look like he drowned while kayaking last August, but they never found his body.
He staged his kayak in a lake, paddled an inflatable raft to shore, rode 70 miles on an E-bike, took a bus to Detroit, then Toronto, and hopped three flights to Paris, Asia, and back to Europe. It turned out he’d been talking to a woman from Uzbekistan he’d met online a few months earlier.
Cops eventually found out he’d gotten a new passport, taken out a $375,000 life insurance policy, and reversed his VASECTOMY so he could start a new family.
They finally tracked him down in Georgia, the country not the state, then got him back to the U.S. and charged him with obstruction. Wisconsin doesn’t have a specific charge for faking your own death.
He was facing up to nine months in jail, and agreed to a plea deal that lowered it to just 45 days. (!!!) But the judge REJECTED the deal and doubled it, or, almost doubled it.
They sentenced him to 89 days, because that’s how long he made his family think he was dead. He also had to pay $30,000 to cover the cost of the search-and-rescue.
He said at sentencing, “I deeply regret the actions that I did that night, and all the pain that I caused my family and friends.”
His wife of 22 years filed for divorce two days after he got back to Wisconsin last year. It’s not clear if his mistress is still in the picture.
(Here’s his mugshot.)
