GREEN LAKE COUNTY, Wis. (WFRV) - As you may expect, the case of the missing kayaker who allegedly faked his death and escaped to Eastern Europe, is a hot conversation topic in Green Lake County right now. Local 5 News was in Green Lake on Monday night, a city across the lake from where Ryan Borgwardt was reported missing in mid-August. He had told his family that he was kayaking on Green Lake. With the exception of one person who was visiting from Florida, everyone that Local 5 News spoke with on Monday night in Green Lake had heard about and had thoughts about the case. "He should be held accountable for it and pay for all of our civil servants' time and efforts to go look for him, it traumatized a whole community," said David Styler who told Local 5 News he lives part-time in Green Lake. Packers players support Salvation Army with autograph signings Styler was the only one who would speak on camera about this topic. Others spoke at length off-camera. There were several commonalities between most of these conversations. First and foremost, people Local 5 News spoke with expressed their sympathies to Borgwardt's family. Borgwardt is married and has three kids who went from thinking he was dead to now grappling with the fact that he may have faked his death to go to Europe. Green Lake residents also expressed outrage at the amount of resources Borgwardt wasted. The Green Lake County sheriff's office and a nonprofit search group called 'Bruce's Legacy' spent countless hours searching for him in the lake. Their efforts also required them to spend money on things like gas for the boats. Traffic stop in Wisconsin yields nearly 1.5 pounds of marijuana; fentanyl & stolen handgun also found The founder of 'Bruce's Legacy' Keith Cormican said it cost him about $10,000 just to help search for Borgwardt for two weeks. Cormican and sheriff deputies had used advanced equipment to search the lake so when they didn't recover Borgwardt's body after a few days of searching questions began popping up. "As more time elapsed we thought there must be something funny here because it doesn't sound right that they couldn't find the body," said Styler. Sheriff deputies said authorities told them that Borgwardt's name had been checked in Canada the day after he went missing. After searching his laptop, authorities found that he had purchased an airline gift card, inquired about moving money to foreign banks, had purchased a pricey life insurance policy, and was communicating with a woman from Uzbekistan. Unity Hospice expands with new Resale Shoppe in De Pere Green Lake County sheriff deputies said they believe that Borgwardt is alive and likely somewhere in Eastern Europe. They are working with other law enforcement agencies to find him, identify if he committed any crimes, and get him to pay restitution for the wasted search effort in the lake. Green Lake residents tell Local 5 News that this county is a great place to live and there's a bunch of amazing people here. They say it's unfortunate that the headlines coming out of the county right now are negative. They also note that Borgwardt is from Watertown (which is Dodge/Jefferson County), not Green Lake, County.