Kentucky Man Faked His Own Death to Avoid Child Support

UPDATE Aug 21, 2024 12:20 PM CDT

Jesse Kipf faked his own death, and now he'll lose years of his life to prison. The Kentucky man was on Monday sentenced to six years as part of a plea deal related to charges of computer fraud and aggravated identity theft. Prosecutors say Kipf hacked into Hawaii's death registry system in January 2023 and filled out a State of Hawaii Death Certificate using the information of an out-of-state doctor; he said he did so in part "to avoid outstanding child support obligations." The sentencing memorandum tallies the child support he owed at $116,000, NBC News reports. Officials say he accessed other state death registry systems as well and tried to sell that access on the dark web; his actions led to almost $80,000 in needed fixes to those systems.

Apr 8, 2024 2:30 AM CDT

A Kentucky man went to great lengths to avoid paying more than $100,000 in outstanding child support—and as a result, he now faces years in jail, not to mention fines that could dwarf that $100,000. In a plea agreement filed recently, Jesse Kipf, 39, admitted to faking his own death in a scheme launched in January 2023, NBC News reports. Using credentials stolen from a doctor in another state, Kipf accessed Hawaii's death registry system and created a fake death certificate for himself, Law & Crime reports. "The defendant also infiltrated other states' death registry systems using credentials he stole from other real people," the plea agreement states. He ended up being listed as deceased in multiple government databases.

Damages included more than $116,000 in losses suffered by his ex-wife, plus $79,000 in losses to governmental and corporate networks (in a separate scheme, he also used stolen credentials to infiltrate other networks and attempt to sell other people access to those networks). He's agreed to pay restitution, and pleaded guilty to one count of aggravated identity theft and one count of computer fraud. On the charges he initially faced, he could have been sentenced to more than three decades behind bars; under his plea deal, he could be jailed for up to seven years and fined up to $500,000. He will be sentenced April 12. (More Kentucky stories.)