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Restitution paid by Ryan Borgwardt, the man who made national news for faking his death on Green Lake in 2024, was used to purchase sonar equipment for responses to real emergencies, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources announced July 15.
As part of a plea deal in his court case, Borgwardt was ordered to pay $30,000, which was divided between the Green Lake County Sheriff's Office and the DNR, to help reimburse the departments for time and resources spent searching for him during a 58-day period before authorities learned he was alive overseas.
The DNR announced it used about $9,000 of those funds to purchase a towfish sonar, a device that can be used underwater to map the bottom of bodies of water for missing people, items or hazards, without putting human divers at risk.
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“The towfish unit is a vital tool to our program that will assist in bringing closure to families and communities when tragedy strikes,” said Lt. Drew Starch, head of the DNR's underwater search and recovery team, in a statement. "The new equipment will be used in searches for the truly missing and help those waiting on the shore."
Already, after just weeks of the towfish sonar being in use, the device has been deployed to four missions and has located two missing people, the DNR said.
Borgwardt was reported missing Aug. 12, 2024, after he did not return home to his wife and three children in Watertown from a solo kayaking trip on Green Lake, the deepest inland lake in Wisconsin.
Authorities subsequently launched a two-month search of the lake, involving underwater drones, sonar, divers and three canine cadaver teams. It was not until October, after they had no luck finding any sign of Borgwardt in the water, that authorities learned Borgwardt had in fact used a passport in Canada the day after he was reported missing.
Pivoting their investigation, authorities determined Borgwardt had fled to Europe and was concealing his location from them.
In November 2024, the sheriff's office made contact with Borgwardt. They attempted over several days to convince him to return home, and learned details about his scheme to disappear, Green Lake County Sheriff Mark Podoll shared at a news conference at the time. Borgwardt told investigators he left an e-bike near the boat launch, then paddled his kayak and a small inflatable boat onto the lake. Out on the water, he overturned the kayak, dumped his phone and left a life vest in the water, before returning to shore in the inflatable boat and taking the e-bike to Madison. There he boarded a bus to Detroit, then from Detroit to Canada, and got on a plane to Toronto.
Investigators later determined that Borgwardt had traveled to Canada, then France, then "a country in Asia," before he landed in the European country of Georgia, according to a criminal complaint.
Borgwardt eventually returned home in December 2024, at which point he was charged with obstructing an officer, a misdemeanor. Green Lake County Circuit Judge Mark Slate noted during court proceedings that the case was an unusual example of a misdemeanor charge, in part because Wisconsin doesn't have a crime for faking a death.
Borgwardt pleaded no contest to the charge in August 2025, and was sentenced to 89 days in jail – the length of time between when he faked his death and his first communication with law enforcement – in addition to restitution costs.
At Borgwardt's sentencing hearing, Green Lake County District Attorney Gerise LaSpisa said Borgwardt faked his death and abandoned his family to start a new life with a woman he met online. He had meticulously carried out the plan, selecting Green Lake particularly because of its depth – but failed to take into account the dedication the community would put toward finding him, she said. Assisting law enforcement and the DNR in the search efforts was Bruce's Legacy, a Black River Falls-based nonprofit organization dedicated to locating drowning victims.
In addition to helping in future missing persons searches, the DNR's new remote sonar tool can be used for purposes like ensuring critical infrastructure protection, responding to environmental spills and protecting underwater cultural resources, like Wisconsin's shipwrecks along Lake Michigan, the agency said.
Contact Kelli Arseneau at (920) 213-3721 or [email protected]. Follow her on X at @ArseneauKelli.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: How restitution from a Wisconsin kayaker's faked death will help find missing people
