A man carried out an elaborate plan to fake his own death, allowing him to leave his wife, children, and life behind for an Eastern European woman whom he met online
Every now and then, you might find yourself daydreaming about leaving your responsibilities behind, moving abroad without a forwarding address, and starting a new life elsewhere.
However, for most of us, these dreams don’t last long. They are more of a momentary fantasy while stuck in traffic on the school run, or when packed like a sardine on a train during the morning commute – but one man tried to make them a reality.
Ryan Borgwardt, 45, spent a long time plotting how to successfully extricate himself from his life and family, disappearing without a trace to Eastern Europe, to be with a woman he had met online. He even went as far as faking his own death, so his family wouldn’t look for him.
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Borgwardt took out a large life insurance policy in January 2024, months before he vanished. He had been chatting with a woman from Uzbekistan, and he finally faked an incident that would leave his family believing he had died.
On 11 August 2024, he took his kayak and headed to Green Lake, Wisconsin, which was not far from where he lived with his family, sending text messages to his wife Emily, setting the stage for her to assume he had died.
“May have snuck out on a lake,” he messaged his spouse. She replied: “That would have been nice to know. I was beginning to wonder why you weren’t home”.
She added, “I should be used to it by now. So many nights I have no idea where you are when it’s late”.
Borgwardt then texted her goodnight and said he loved her. Emily replied, asking him to be safe out on the water at night. Around 11 pm, he told her he would be “heading back to shore soon.”
He had taken two boats out with him that night, his usual kayak and a child’s inflatable boat. While he was on the water, he tipped over his kayak to make it look as though there had been some kind of incident before heading back to shore safely on the inflatable boat.
He grabbed a bike he had stashed nearby and cycled for much of the night, then used buses to get across the Canadian border, where he boarded a plane. Earlier that day, he had taken snaps of his passport and moved money to a foreign bank account.
By 5am, his wife was frantic, messaging him: “Where are you????” and “Babe?” – but she never got a reply. His entire family mourned him, genuinely believing he was dead or something terrible had happened.
Two months later, the police discovered nothing could be further from the truth, and called off their hunt for Borgwardt.
They found out that he had used his passport on 13 August in Canada, and through the assistance of a “Russian-speaking woman,” they got hold of him, confirming he was alive and well, reported People magazine. He admitted how he had tried to pull off his plan to leave his life behind.
In December 2024, he “willingly” returned to the US, where he was slapped with a $30,000 (£22,128) fine for wasting police time and resources. His wife, Emily, divorced him in May 2025, and he was sentenced to 89 days in prison, which is the same length of time for which he disappeared.
“I deeply regret the actions that I did that night and all the pain that I caused my family and friends,” he said before he was sentenced.