The authorities spent weeks searching a Wisconsin lake for the man’s body before discovering that he had moved money into a foreign bank account and had been communicating with a woman in Uzbekistan.

Ryan Borgwardt, a married father of three, has been missing since August after leaving for a relaxing fishing trip on Green Lake, about an hour north of his home in Watertown, Wisconsin. Investigators now suspect the experienced kayaker faked his own death and fled to Europe via Canada.