Keith Cormican of Bruce's Legacy Search and Recovery spent 33 days searching Green Lake for Ryan Borgwardt.

A volunteer search and recovery expert says he will not seek compensation for his organization's extensive search efforts in the case of Ryan Borgwardt, the kayaker from Watertown who police believe faked his death and fled the country in August.

Keith Cormican is the founder and director of Bruce's Legacy Search and Recovery, a volunteer organization that assists in the search for and recovery of possible drowning victims. The organization was named after Cormican's brother, Bruce, a Black River Falls firefighter who died searching for a drowning victim in 1995.

Bruce's Legacy volunteers, the Green Lake County Sheriff's Office and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources teamed up to search for Borgwardt after he was reported missing on Aug. 12. Borgwardt, a 44-year-old husband and father of three, was believed to be missing after a kayaking trip on Green Lake. But, in the fall, he was located alive in Europe. On Tuesday, Borgwardt was taken into custody at the Green Lake County Jail. He had flown back to Wisconsin and turned himself in.

Cormican said he spent over a month searching for Borgwardt, supported in part by donations from Green Lake County and Watertown community members. He said he spent 23 days ― some 10-to-12 hours long ― searching the lake on his boat with another Bruce's Legacy volunteer and sheriff's office or DNR personnel. The search team used underwater drones, towable submersible sonar and other high-end technology that Cormican said would have found Borgwardt's body within two days if he'd been in the lake.

Over an additional 10 days, Cormican reviewed sonar images in his office in hopes of bringing closure to Borgwardt's family.

Cormican said he's "thought about" taking action against Borgwardt for the time and money wasted but does not plan to because he does not want to burden Borgwardt's family.

"He cost me a lot of money and probably the sheriff's department a lot of money. It'd be nice to be compensated, but I don't think that's going to work. ...," Cormican told the Journal Sentinel on Wednesday morning. "If he were filthy rich or something, I guess then I wouldn't have a problem with it, but that's not the case here."

"In my belief, I wouldn't seek out restitution. I think it's just going to create more burden on the family. ... They're the ones that are going to live through this, and this has just got to be unbearable to try to figure out this mess he created."

Search teams were suspicious of Borgwardt's story

As the search for Borgwardt became weeks and then months long, Cormican said he began to question whether the kayaker was even in the lake. After a few days, he encouraged the sheriff's office to interview some of Borgwardt's family members.

"They came back and didn't feel that anything was out of the ordinary, so we kept plugging away," Cormican recalled. "And then, it was toward the end of our 23 days there, I had a conversation with the sheriff and explained that this is very rare. With as thorough as we covered it and with the information that we had on him, ... we should have found him within the first day or so."

Cormican again pressed the sheriff's office to "search a little further" into Borgwardt. Cormican said this is the first time he knows of someone faking a drowning death.

"It's a pretty ... self-centered thing that he did," Cormican said. "He didn't realize how many people would get involved in something like this. We poured our hearts into it because we wanted to help his family get closure. That's what we do. We know the importance of getting that closure."

Ryan Borgwardt is believed to have faked his death

At around 10:49 p.m. on Aug. 11, Borgwardt, who was kayaking on Green Lake, sent his final text to his wife, telling her he was heading to shore. When Borgwardt failed to return from his kayaking trip, he was reported missing. Authorities began searching for him early on the morning of Aug. 12.

On Aug. 13, Borgwardt's name was checked by Canadian law enforcement while he was passing through customs using a second passport he apparently obtained after reporting the first one lost. Meanwhile, the search continued in Wisconsin for the husband and father. With help from Bruce's Legacy, the Green Lake County Sheriff's Office reported on Aug. 20 that Borgwardt's kayak, life jacket, water bottle, tackle box and fishing rod had been found.

Still, an extensive search involving underwater drones, towable submersible sonar, divers and three K-9 cadaver teams did not turn up Borgwardt's body.

On Oct. 7, a new investigation was opened into Borgwardt's disappearance. Later, the Green Lake County Sheriff's Office publicly stated it believed Borgwardt staged his disappearance and had likely fled to Europe. On Nov. 21, the sheriff's office revealed it had been in regular communication with Borgwardt since Nov. 11 and shared a video Borgwardt had sent investigators showing he was safe.

The Sheriff's Office also revealed the following details about how Borgwardt staged his death: He stashed an eBike near the boat launch. He paddled a kayak and a child-size inflatable boat out into the lake. He overturned the kayak and dumped his phone in the lake. He paddled the inflatable boat to shore and then rode the eBike through the night to Madison. He boarded a bus in Madison going to Detroit and then headed to the Canadian border. He continued on the bus to the airport and got on a plane.

Green Lake County Sheriff Mark Podoll said authorities were able to first reach Borgwardt via a "woman speaking Russian." A digital forensic analysis of Borgwardt's laptop revealed he cleared his browsers on the day of his disappearance, replaced the hard drive, inquired about moving funds to foreign banks and had constant communication with a woman from Uzbekistan. Borgwardt had also taken out a new $375,000 life insurance policy in January.

Brandon Reid, Lynne A. Fort and Justin Marville contributed to this report.