Law&Crime Sidebar - Missing Dad Who Faked Death to Be with Lover Contacts Police: Detectives

Episode Date: November 22, 2024

Ryan Borgwardt has found himself at the center of an international scandal after he allegedly faked his death while out kayaking and ran off to Europe. At the request of Wisconsin police, the married father sent them a video confirming his identity and that he’s alive and well in Eastern Europe. Law&Crime’s Jesse Weber gets reaction to the unexpected twist from attorney Sarena Townsend.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW:Take your personal data back with Incogni! Use code SIDEBAR at the link below and get 60% off an annual plan: http://incogni.com/sidebarHOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokeVideo Editing - Michael Deininger and Christina FalconeScript Writing & Producing - Savannah Williamson & Juliana BattagliaGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist. The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. Good evening. It's right. What work is today is home is. Today is November 11th. It's In a safe, 10 a.m. You can say a.m. like you. Safe, secure. In a surprising twist to a baffling case,

a Wisconsin father who allegedly faked his own death has now sent authorities of video confirming he is alive and safe and possibly in Europe. The video has raised even more questions about his disappearance, his disappearance and what is next for the man who left behind his family and a costly search effort welcome to sidebar presented by law and crime jesse weber well it is certainly a shocking new twist in an already shocking case a wisconsin man who allegedly staged his own death three months ago leaving his family you know devastated has been in regular communication with

authorities. Yeah, he even sent them a video confirming he was safe and sound. What is this? I mean, we brought you this case in a previous episode of Sidebar when we learned, had just learned that 45-year-old father of three husband, Ryan Borgwart, allegedly staged his own death after disappearing in August under very suspicious circumstances. Borgwart left behind his kayak and belongings in Wisconsin's Green Lake, leading authorities to believe that he had drowned. But after weeks of intense searching and also a digital forensics investigation, authorities discovered what could be the chilling truth that Borgwart instead had left the country to go to Eastern Europe, where he's now apparently hold up in an undisclosed

location. And by the way, I got to say, I think with the content that we cover here on sidebar many times, it just goes to show you how important personal safety is. And that is especially true when you think about protecting your privacy online, I think you'd be shocked at how much of your personal information is out there, like your address and your phone number. Do you ever wonder why you get so many spam calls and emails? That's because all that information's public. But that is where our sponsor Incogni comes in. It is a service that helps you take control of your online privacy by removing your personal data from data brokers, these huge companies that sell and trade your information without your permission. And here's the kicker. These data brokers have to

remove you from their database if you ask them to. Now, if you're thinking, I don't have time to call data broker. Well, again, that's where incogni comes in. They contact these companies for you to get your online safety back. You don't have to do a thing. And then they alert you after the request has been completed. So I highly recommend giving incogny a try. And right now, they have a Black Friday deal where anyone who uses code sidebar and incogny.com slash sidebar gets 60% off of an annual incognity plan. Hope you can check it out. So to break all this down, I want to bring on criminal defense attorney Serena Townsend. Serena, good to see you again. It's been a minute. since we've had you on sidebar.

And what did I think? What better case to bring you on to talk about one of the most bizarre stories I've heard in quite some time just overall, yeah, I mean, overall just thoughts on this. The shock when we talk about a father who's still alive and now apparently communicating with police, I mean, what a twist. Horrible. First of all, I would sum this up to say this is the worst midlife crisis I have ever seen in my life.

Not to make a line of it, but yeah, yeah, yeah. Because it's crazy, you know, look, how can, it's bad enough for a man to abandon his family. It's really quite awful. And the victims here are really his wife and children and anybody else who actually cares for this man. But then to do so in such a horrible way to make them think that you've died, only to resurface and cooperate with police and then make it clear that you don't want to come home. it's it's worse it's it's almost worse than death for this family uh to have to go through this it's just so terrible and emotional so yeah it is bizarre yeah and i want to talk to you about this

video so there's this news conference that was held this week where the green lake county sheriff played a 24 second video sent or seemingly sent by ryan borgwart earlier this month where he can be heard quietly confirming that he's alive and well and I should tell you, we tried to boost the audio a little bit, but here you go. police. That has to do with the forensic investigation that police conducted on a laptop that they received from Borgwart's wife. Last time we brought you this story, we mentioned that he'd apparently been in contact with some woman in Uzbekistan. While authorities, they dug into communications on that laptop and they made contact with this Russian speaking woman

who put them in touch with Ryan Borgwart. Don't know for sure if that is the same woman in question that he had been talking to, but police then asked him questions to confirm it was really him and then they asked him for a video. So that's what they got. Now, Serena, let me bring you on on this because if he wanted to disappear, again, why would he be communicating with police? It's really strange. I don't know why he would. And in fact, I would have advised him not to because he might be facing, which we'll talk about later, I'm sure, some criminal charges. And As a criminal defense attorney, you know, my first thing that I tell clients or potential clients is do not speak with police, especially if you could be a suspect in a crime. So I don't know why he would ever do that.

I think obviously the police has have a good reason to want to speak to him to check for signs of life, to check to see if he's there voluntarily, or is this a mission where they have to, you know, extract him from a location because he was kidnapped or he's in danger? very strange because you also imagine if you really wanted to pick up and start a new life why seemingly fake your death if they got the goals hey you know listen i don't want my family to think i'm dead then why did you allegedly make it look like you're dead why don't you say i'm leaving i'm going to eastern europe by everybody i don't get it like you you want to make again taking all the allegations is true either you want to fake your death and make it look like you died. But now you're kind of reversing course after all the effort you made to make it look like you died. I'm confused. Yeah, I think I think this is a man in crisis. I think he made some really,

really bad decisions that he thought were good decisions. And I think that after that high wore off and maybe perhaps he saw that they were not stopping to try to track him down, he made some sort of statement that he thought they would search for him for two weeks and then give up um i think he might have started to feel like he was going to get caught anyway they were going to find him anyway in today's day and age it's not like the 70s and the 80s you can be so easily tracked um your phone your computer so maybe he just realized the gig is up i'm going to get caught i might as well just come out can you tell where he is in this video and let me couple that with this can you not not like you know where his location. I mean, do you think they're going to be able to tell where he is just from that

background? But also, I'm wondering, did he specifically take that video in a different location from maybe where he's staying? Right. I mean, if he's really still trying to allude the police, he might have gone elsewhere. And it depends on what device he used to make that video. So if he used his own cell phone, they can get a warrant for that phone and conduct, it's called trap and trace, warrant and a pen register. And basically, they can triangulate his location based on the signals of that cell phone and what towers it's pinging off of. So it depends on the device he uses, but it's not beyond the realm of possibility that they could track him via that device. Now, it's not just the fact that his location is a mystery. We also don't know if he plans to come

home to be with his family. Our primary, a due gestural concern has been that he safely gets back to U.S. soil. He needs to return home to his children. If he chooses not to return, it's on his own free will. And I think the message is very clear. We have been continuing to contact the family members regarding our communication with Ryan. No warrants have been issued yet. We believe that warrants will not be needed if Ryan cooperates and decides to turn and return home soon.

Doesn't look like he's planning on coming home, right? Even if I don't know if it's to start a new life, to be with maybe a woman, you wonder, was this the way to go about it? But doesn't look like he plans to come home, right? It doesn't. It looks like the police have been really kind of begging him to come home, pulling at his heartstrings, as they were saying, to try to convince him to come back. And, you know, it just, it feels like if he had wanted to come back, he would have,

especially since he's already now confirmed that he's alive. So again, I say, I think he's a man in crisis. So let me ask you this. He could be facing some pretty hefty consequences if he's found or he returns to the country. I'll get to that in a minute. But you heard the sheriff talk about a warrant. What would a warrant look like here? How would it work?

People like I mentioned before, they want to try to locate somebody. They could try to, you know, get a warrant to get a person, to find that person. Also, they want to potentially search through his. devices. And, you know, people are entitled to their privacy and a law enforcement officer has to get proof that there might be something uncovered that would help in an investigation that a judge has to approve of before they could go in to somebody's home or into somebody's devices because that is, you know, private and it's covered. So they may be looking just for more clues by getting those warrants issued. I want to give everybody a little bit of backstory here. So

Borgworth's disappearance, it set that family into a literal tailspan because in August he was reported missing after his kayak was found capsized in Green Lake. Authorities discovered his vehicle was still parked along with a fishing rod, tackle box, personal items like his driver's license, keys. For weeks, search teams scoured the lake with divers, sonar boats. There was a nonprofit group that was dedicated to finding drowning victims. They became a part of it. And the investigation then took this sharp turn when authorities analyzed the laptop that belonged to Borgwark's wife. And what they discovered was an entire digital footprint that he left behind. Forensic experts found evidence of financial transactions, including money that was apparently

moved into a foreign bank account, the purchase of an online or an airline gift card. And even though he had apparently gone to great lengths to try to wipe his footprint, you know, removing the laptop's hard drive, clearing his browser history, even changing his email address, authorities still established this contact that he had with this Russian-speaking woman that we mentioned earlier. Well, apparently, in communications with police, Borgwart actually expressed remorse for the pain that his actions have caused, which, like you said, Serena, kind of goes into this mid-like crisis he might be having.

But I have to talk more about the family here because they have to go through these stages of grief. First, they want, you know, they're grieving thinking he died, and now they have to accept that he's alive. But when you look at this digital footprint here, I wonder, was there any way that they could have found out what he was doing beforehand? Right. And I mean, this is all going to go to his state of mind, whether this is, you know, criminally prosecuted or even just for his family to take in and overcome. He planned this. And he planned it pretty meticulously. You know, I guess he thought he'd be able to get away with it by removing that hard drive. He understood then that there was a potential digital. footprint there. He just didn't go far enough or didn't recognize that, yeah, you could still get tracked, even if you take a hard drive with you. But it's really devastating for the family

because it just goes to show that it wasn't exactly on a whim. You know, it showed that he had really taken steps to plan this out and to try to not be found. You talked about planning. There's another bizarre piece of this is how detailed he got with police about what he did about his plan because in this recent communication he had with them he revealed how he actually carried out this escape he stashed an e-bike near the boat launch he paddled his kayak and a child-sized floating boat out into the lake he overturned the kayak and dumped his phone in the lake he paddled the inflatable boat to shore and got on his e-bike and rode through the night to Madison in Madison he boarded a bus and went to Detroit and then the Canadian border

he continued on the bus to an airport and got on a plane and they say of course they're going to verify that information verify that story but serena my gosh if true unbelievable that effort that commitment that planned he wanted to be gone and he wanted nobody to find him and he only had a few miscalculations it really feels like he he could have potentially gotten away with it um if not for those few missteps number one being that he thought that nobody would care enough about him uh to continue this search which is kind of sad in its own way because maybe that's why he left and maybe now he's realizing gee i guess they really do care about me um and then of course misunderstanding the digital footprint stuff why reveal all this again he's it's it's incriminating

himself and we'll get to these criminal potential criminal charges in a section in a second but if they back it up and say yeah he took the boat you know he took the e-bike he took the bus he took all the you know all these travel records if he's if they could back it up why is he incriminating himself like this. He may not realize the extent of where this goes. He may just be thinking that, all right, I, you know, I've been found out. Let me at least, you know, reveal how I did it because I don't want to be lying to police. You know, I don't really know what his mindset is, but he might just be extremely scared. And he might just feel like I might as well just say it all. Why would he be scared? Okay, well, let's talk about it. Because as for the ramifications that he

could face. They are very serious, according to the sheriff. The information that the Green Lake County has at this point leads us to an obstructing charge. What he did on the lake staging his death. I cannot comment on the federal charges that may or may not be filed through our federal partners. The second one and one of the big most important one was regarding the amount that Green Lake County will be seeking for restitution. It's in the area of $35,000 to $40,000. These costs do not include what Bruce's legacy did or our divers, Charlie DeGroote. We're looking at about 7,000 thousand dollars in equipment expenses that along with the wages okay so serena let's break this down

ramifications legally what constitutes an obstruction charge under wisconsin state law how would it apply here so it actually is not that simple to apply to this situation a lot of places have sweeping obstruction charges where if you do something like this would kind of you know force police to do things that they shouldn't really have to be spending their energy and money and time on, you know, you could go down for that. In Wisconsin, you know, it almost feels like he's one step away from a crime. They're going to have to prove that he made police do this. And because he didn't, I mean, the argument is that he did, right?

But really, the family wanted to look for him. The family encountered the police and brought them on. And the family wanted the police to investigate. And so maybe there's some sort of argument that it doesn't apply. But let me press you on that. Let me press you on that a little bit because I looked into the statute and it says what obstructs means includes without limitation knowingly giving false information to the officer. I don't think that applies here because he didn't have him, you know, prior communication with police and he seems to be forthcoming. This is where I think it might get him.

or knowingly placing physical evidence with intent to mislead the officer in the performance of his or her duty, including the service of any summons or civil process. So he creates a fake crime scene intent to mislead. I feel like that's what we could be talking about here now. Absolutely. And that's why it's so important for police to elicit all of the specifics of what he did. because you have to go to his, what we call mens rea, his state of mind. Did he do this intentionally that is set up this false crime scene, this fake evidence?

And did he appreciate and recognize what that would have meant? I mean, his statement where he said, I thought they would only search for me for two weeks, seems to, you know, kind of elicit that in his mind he did think that police would be misled. He did think that police would be involved. So I do agree that this separate part of the Wisconsin statute is where they're probably going to laser focus and all of these statements that he's making is not helping his case at all. I saw this as a class H felony, which I think carries up to six years in prison. I don't know if you saw something different, but if this actually, he gets arrested, he gets tried, whether he's convicted or takes a plea deal, I mean, we're really talking far down the line because there's a lot of hoops that would have to come from him to, excuse me, to be arrested for this. you think that this would he would get prison for this you think you'd get up to six years in prison

for this that's a really good question we see all of the time certain charges could be met with a maximum of x amount of years in prison very rarely is it so that a person gets that maximum amount of time particularly if they don't have a prior criminal history here i think that there's going to be an attempt by his defense attorney to provide a ton of of mitigation on his behalf, mitigation meaning, you know, he, like I said, maybe he was going through some sort of mental health crisis. If I'm his attorney, I'm going to get him mentally evaluated and try to get some sort of psychologist or psychiatrist to draft a report to the judge to say, look, you know, you may think that he intended to do X, Y, and Z, but he wasn't in his right

mind. Please be lenient on him for this. The way the family feels about, it is going to affect how he gets punished as well. You know, some might argue that the family has lost him long enough already. They want him home. Prison is not going to bring him home. So there are options there. I thought it were, it seems they might have a really strong case is the idea of restitution, restitution to Green Lake County for the search efforts here. And this is something we've seen before in other cases of false reporting or fake crimes or staged attacks or stage crimes, that part can't be ignored. The time and the expense, the wages, the cost of searching for him for investigating what they thought was an actual crime or an accidental

death. That's totally legitimate. A lot of times in criminal cases, you hear that restitution is really not a criminal remedy. It's more of a civil remedy. And so, for example, if somebody assaults, somebody else and that person has medical needs, and medical bills that they need to pay a lot of times you can't not that you can't but it's really unlikely to get restitution from the perpetrator but in federal cases and in cases where you defraud the government and the government is out money you better bet that they seek restitution in those cases so they also said the sheriff also said he would not comment on federal charges but you see that as a possibility here what would federal charges look like

Yes. I do think there's a possibility for federal charges because we did learn through this investigation that he had taken out an insurance policy, a life insurance policy on himself for the benefit of his family. I think it was something in the area of $375,000. And that's a lot of money. And obviously he didn't die. And obviously he faked his death. And I believe that the insurance policy was taken close in time to his. disappearance. If the feds are interested and they have an appetite to go after him for this, I do think that they could charge him with insurance fraud. Because if he intended to fake his death in order to benefit his family so that they could get money illegally, I mean, that money

is not legally obtained if he's still alive. Then, then yes, I believe it would qualify. Because in other words, abandoning your family, if you didn't stage a crime, you didn't engage in insurance fraud, picking up, leaving, going to another country to start a new life without telling your family, that in and of itself is not a crime, right? It feels like it should be, but it's not. Yeah, yeah. Let me ask you this. If you talk about these potential charges, isn't this going to disincentivize him to not come home? Absolutely. I think that part of him is already thinking that, even though he's talking a lot more than he should, I do think he's afraid of the repercussions. And I would expect that he's afraid that the repercussions exceed just, you know, disappointment by his community and his family. I think he's got to know that the reason the police are still so aggressively involved in this is because they want to get him back for other reasons than just reuniting him with the family. I mean, Sheriff Podol has said that that is the focus.

The focus of this investigation is to figure out a way to get him to come back. And would there be, would there be something where they say, listen, you're facing charges right now. You come back right now. No one's going to get prosecuted. What do you think? You think that's an option? You know, police say stuff like that a lot. They try to, they can't really make a promise, but they could allude to it.

They could oftentimes say, like, look, I can't promise that nothing's going to happen. to you, but I can tell you this, if you cooperate with us, it's going to go very far in, you know, mitigating the potential repercussions here and the potential jail sentence. They're not necessarily wrong, but it's, it's kind of sneaky tactic to get him back. And a lot of times people fall for that. What a story. My gosh. Well, we will see if he decides to come back, if he sends any other videos that are hard to hear. I mean, we'll see. I feel really bad for his family. It's just, it's hard to imagine what they're going through all of this.

But Serena Townsend, thanks so much for breaking it down with us. Good to see you again. Don't be a stranger. Come back here on Sidebar more often. Thank you so much. All right, everybody. That is all we have for you right now here on this episode of Sidebar. Thank you so much for joining us.

And as always, please subscribe on Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jesse Weber. I'll speak to you next time. You can binge all episodes of this law and crime series ad free right now on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.