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GREEN LAKE, Wisconsin (WCCO) -- Authorities are urging a Wisconsin man accused of faking his death and fleeing to Europe to come home to spend the holidays with his wife and three children.
Ryan Borgwardt, 45, went missing on Aug. 12 while kayaking in Green Lake, about 50 miles northeast of Wisconsin Dells. Crews spent 54 days searching the lake, which is more than 200 feet deep at points, to no avail.
The entire search effort cost nearly $40,000, according to Green Lake County Sheriff Mark Podoll.
"Great news, we know that he's alive and well," Podoll said in a press conference on Thursday. "And, well, the bad news is that we don't know where Ryan exactly is, and he has not decided to return home."
Podoll says investigators have been in email contact with Borgwardt since earlier this month and played a cellphone video he had sent them on Nov. 11.
"I'm in my apartment. I am safe, secure," Borgwardt said in the video.
Podoll says Borgwardt has since admitted to staging his disappearance by overturning his kayak, padding back to shore in a smaller boat, riding his e-bike to a bus station, bussing from Detroit to Canada and then flying to Europe.
Podoll says his investigators discovered in early October that Borgwardt had entered Canada a day after his disappearance. He synced his laptop to the cloud a few days earlier, swapped out his hard drive and cleared his search history.
They also determined he had taken out a $375,000 life insurance policy months earlier, transferred money into a foreign bank and was in contact with a woman living in Uzbekistan. Podoll says they were eventually able to contact Borgwardt via a Russian-speaking woman.
Podell became emotional during Thursday's press conference, saying Borgwardt's family wants him to return home. He implored Borgwardt to "clean up the mess that he has created."
"Christmas is coming, and what better gift he could give his kids is to be there for Christmas with them," Podell said.
The sheriff says no criminal charges have been filed yet, but Borgwardt may be charged with obstruction of the investigation.
Borgwardt is from Watertown, located about 50 miles northwest of Milwaukee.
