A Wisconsin man who had been missing since August after going kayaking on Green Lake recently resurfaced to confess to faking his death and moving to Eastern Europe.

On August 12, the tranquility of the town of Watertown, Wisconsin, was shattered by the disappearance of Ryan Borgwardt, a 44-year-old husband and father of three. Borgwardt had gone on a short kayaking trip on Green Lake but disappeared completely, and an emergency search found his capsized kayak on the lake and his vehicle and trailer in a nearby park, suggesting that he had fallen in the lake and drowned. A day later, local fishermen found Ryan’s fishing rod and then a tacklebox containing his belongings. All the signs pointed to Borgwardt’s accidental demise, but then, one day, during the investigation that followed, local law enforcement found evidence that suggested Ryan had crossed into Canada, and border authorities there confirmed that they had indeed run his passport a day after his disappearance. It was this discovery that led to the uncovering of Ryan Borgwardt’s elaborate plan to fake his death and leave his family behind.

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A 47-year-old Chinese woman who spent most of her life searching for her young brother’s cruel killer recently reached her goal, putting her target in prison after nearly three decades.

Li Haiyu’s heartbreaking tale of revenge began in December of 1992 when the woman’s father and another man started arguing about wages. Things got so heated between them that at one point, the other man decided to get back at Haiyu’s father by kidnapping his 9-year-old son, Li Huanping, as he left school. Police were called and a search for the boy and his kidnapper was organized in the area around their village in Hunan Province. Li Huanping’s clothes were found on the outskirts of a nearby village, but his body was only found in February of the following year, by which time his kidnapper had disappeared. The police report concluded that he had been stabbed and abandoned in a sugarcane field, but his father didn’t tell his wife and five daughters the truth until his dying day, letting them hold on to the hope of one day being reunited with Li Huanping.

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A Singapore family court recently issued a partial domestic exclusion order against a woman who had allegedly been forcefully entering her adult brother’s room at odd hours of the night to clean.

On October 31st, two Singaporean siblings obtained court orders against each other following a bizarre legal dispute that left the judge scratching their head. A woman managed to get a protection order against her brother who had reportedly physically assaulted her, while he got a domestic order banning her from entering his room, which happens to be why he assaulted her in the first place. A third sibling told the court that tensions between the two had been rising for years, particularly because their sister would come into the brother’s room in the middle of the night to clean it, infringing on his privacy and preventing him from sleeping. One day, the man just snapped.

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A Malaysian woman who took care of her bedridden husband for six years following a car accident recently announced that her husband divorced her and married another woman following his recovery.

For years, Nurul Syazwani documented her daily life as her husband’s caretaker on social media, showcasing her busy routine which included feeding the man through a nasogastric tube, changing his diapers and helping him bathe. Nurul’s husband was injured in a car accident and needed six years in order to walk again, during which time she was by his side. Her dedication and dutiful service to her husband attracted 32,000 fans on Facebook alone, many of whom were shocked to learn that Nurul Syazwani’s husband hadn’t only divorced her after recovering but had also married another woman. They learned of the crazy development from Nurul who congratulated her ex-husband and his new bride in a Facebook post.

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An Austrian man who incited his 14-year-old son and his best friend to commit a series of armed robberies tried to pin the blame on the two teens in court after they were caught.

A 34-year-old man recently shocked the Judge and Jury in Courtroom 1 of the Vienna Regional Court after putting the blame on his 14-year-old son and his 17-year-old best friend for a series of robberies, claiming they had masterminded the crimes and he was only their getaway driver. The trio’s modus operandi was pretty much the same every time. The two minors were sent into tobacco shops and gas stations wearing balaclavas and wielding knives or pistols loaded with blank bullets, while the 34-year-old man waited outside behind the wheel of the getaway car. They carried out seven robberies before finally getting caught, but instead of taking responsibility for inciting the two boys, he claimed that they had convinced him to be their accomplice.

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A Mexican woman is being accused of paying three thugs to throw red paint on her future daughter-in-law’s wedding dress to stop her from marrying her son.

On February 17, a couple managed to get married in the town of Ciudad Obregón, Mexico’s Sonora Province, despite facing constant harassment from the groom’s family. News of the couple’s plight went viral in Mexico after photos of the bride wearing a white wedding dress splattered with red paint on her big day started doing the rounds on social media. According to numerous reports from sources close to the couple, as the bride was standing outside the church where the wedding ceremony was to take place, three thugs showed up and splattered her with red paint while recording the whole thing, most likely as evidence for the person who hired them. This was allegedly only the latest incident orchestrated by the groom’s family to stop the couple from going through with the wedding.

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Japanese media recently reported the controversial story of a 35-year-old Japanese man who allegedly has four wives and three small children but hasn’t worked in over a decade.

35-year-old Ryuta Watanabe of Sapporo, on Japan’s Hokkaido Island, has become an overnight sensation in his home country due to an unconventional lifestyle. Watanabe reportedly lives with three of his four wives – who get along great with each other – and relies on them for most of the family’s financial needs, as he hasn’t had a job in the last 10 years. The polygamous family’s daily life was recently featured on Japan’s AbemaTV news program Abema Prime and sparked quite a heated debate in Japan, a country where polygamy is officially banned. To bypass Japan’s polygamy law, Ryuta’s four wives are currently in what is known as a ‘common-law relationship’ with him, but they plan to register their marriages and then divorce him, one at a time, so they can take the surname ‘Watanabe’ and pass it on to their children.

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A South Korean woman made international news headlines for legally adopting her adult best friend after a medical emergency made her realize that they needed a stronger connection to take care of each other.

44-year-old Eun Seo-ran grew up in a stereotypical South Korean patriarchal family in which her father was the breadwinner and her mother was consigned to the role of homemaker, serving her husband’s family. She slaved for them her entire life, but never got so much as a bit of gratitude from her spouse, but she made sure that Seo-ran followed another path in life. She never even allowed her in the kitchen as a young girl and always told her to preserve her freedom. Eun Seo-ran vowed to never end up like her mother, and decided to not get married or have children. To this day, she believes that it would be irresponsible of her to get married, but she also understands that there are situations where family members are the only ones who can help…

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The village of Baktawng, in India’s north-eastern state of Mizoram, is home to the world’s largest known family, 199 people who live under the same roof in a giant building.

Pu Ziona was the patriarch of what was generally regarded as the world’s largest family – 38 wives, 89 children, and 36 children. Ziona passed away in 2021, at the age of 76, due to health complications caused by hypertension and diabetes, but his family continues to live under the same roof in the impressive living complex Ziona built in the hills of Baktawng. Some of his children got wives of their own, some more than one, and the family member count now stands at 199. They all gather in the great hall of their home twice a day to eat, in a scene that looks more like a busy canteen than a family dining room. The members share everything, from the daily workload to the food and finances, and even though everyone wants to carry on the legacy of Pu Ziona, things are changing for the world’s largest family…

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A UK man has been jailed for draining tens of thousands of pounds from his father’s bank accounts by faking both his voice and that of his dead mother, during phone calls with bank staff.

A complex police investigation found that during a 14-month period in 2017 and 2018, just months after his mother had passed away, 42-year-old Daniel Cuthbert defrauded his grieving father of more than £56,000 ($70,000) by phoning his parents’ bank and posing as both his father and his late mother. Audio footage released by Northamptonshire Police revealed how Cuthbert faked his dead mother’s name on at least nine occasions. He can be heard correctly answering a number of security questions before requesting that a sum of money be transferred from his parents’ account into another account. Cuthbert took all of his father’s savings, including his redundancy pau-out, and also took several loans in his name.

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A Chilean man was kicked out of the house by his family after the Civil Registry Office mistakenly registered him as the father of two Venezuelan children whom he had never even met.

Up until the beginning of this month, Leonardo Sepúlveda Rodríguez, a middle-aged man from Santiago, Chile, had enjoyed a peaceful and fulfilling life alongside his wife of 30 years and their two children. However, everything came crashing down on July 5th, when his son went to the local Civil Registry Office to get some documentation required for Family Court and learned that Leonardo had recognized two Venezuelan children as his own. The son called Sepúlveda Rodríguez to confront him, but he was just as dumbfounded. He had never even traveled abroad, let alone conceived two children in Venezuela, but despite his best attempts to prove his innocence, his wife asked him to move out of the house.

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A 72-year-old man in China melted the hearts of millions after it was reported that he spends most of his time promoting makeup and other beauty products online in order to treat his sick grandson.

People will do all sorts of crazy things for their loved ones, and 72-year-old Zhu Yunchang is a perfect example. The Chinese pensioner has been dedicating a lot of his time to his unusual job, that of makeup-wearing beauty blogger, for which he applies all sorts of beauty products, from creams to lipstick and mascara for fans all over the country. It’s not exactly typical behavior for a man Zhu’s age, but then again, his is not a typical story.

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A Spanish court recently ordered a Malaga businessman to pay his ex-wife 204,000 euros “as compensation for unpaid domestic work done in the home” during the 25 years they were married.

A woman who dedicated 25 years of her life to supporting her entrepreneur husband and taking care of their two daughters was recently granted 204,000 ($215,000) in compensation for all her unpaid work. The couple married in June of 1995, when they were in their twenties, and signed a separation of assets the very next month. The document basically stated that each spouse retained exclusive ownership of property acquired during the marriage. This turned out to be a lot more beneficial to the husband, who started multiple businesses, while the wife took care of their two young daughters and did all the domestic work.

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An Indian man recently made national news headlines after filing a police complaint against his own father, accusing him of seducing his wife and eventually eloping with her.

They say all is fair in love and war, and that love is blind, but there is also such a thing as forbidden love. Pawan Vairagi, a worker from India’s Rajasthan state, is accusing his own father of falling in love with his wife and luring her away from him. Vairagi, who hails from a village called Silor, told authorities that he had been spending a lot of time away from his family because of work, which allegedly gave his father the opportunity to spend more time with his wife and seduce her. The pair recently eloped, leaving Pawan’s six-month-old daughter behind.

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A Chinese man ended up taking his daughter to court after she refused to neglect her duty as a university student in order to come home and take care of him following a car accident.

The man, surnamed Zhang, allegedly started calling and messaging his daughter after being involved in a car accident in his home city of Puyang, China’s Henan province. After repeatedly trying and failing to convince the young college student to come home and care for him, the man was shocked to find that his daughter had blocked his phone number. In a fit of rage, he filed a complaint with a local family court, asking her for 1,500 yuan ($215) in monthly alimony. Article 26 of the Chinese Civil Code stipulates that “adult children have the obligation to support and protect their parents”.

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