A Man in Kentucky Who Faked Death to Dodge Paying Child Support Has Been Given More Than Six Years in Prison
Prosecutors said Tuesday that a man in Kentucky who faked his death in the state’s death registry to avoid paying over $100,000 in back child support has been sentenced to over six years in jail.
Tuesday, Jesse Kipf, 39, was given his term in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky. He had pleaded guilty to computer fraud and aggravated identity theft.
In January 2023, Kipf used the information of a doctor from another state to get into the Hawaii death registry system and made up a death certificate for himself, according to a news statement from the prosecutors.
The release said that he filled out a Hawaii death certificate worksheet, named himself as the medical certifier for the case, and certified his death using the doctor’s digital signature. As a result, he was listed as dead in many government records.
He admitted to lying about his death in part “to avoid outstanding child support obligations,” according to the police.
The sentence memorandum said he owed more than $116,000.
That wasn’t all he did.
With “credentials he stole from real people,” Kipf also got into other state death record systems, private business networks, and government and corporate networks. Police said in a report that he then tried to sell access to those networks on the dark web.
The sentencing memo said that Kipf admitted to having databases of personally identifiable information on his electronic devices. This information included medical records and Social Security numbers, which he sold to “international buyers, including individuals from Algeria, Russia, and Ukraine.”
The damage to the state death registry systems costs almost $80,000 to fix. The filing also talked about “untold consequences in trying to rectify the networks and the harm to the individuals whose personally identifying information was exposed, stolen, or misused.”
To get out of jail, Kipf has to serve 85% of his sentence. After that, he will be watched over by the U.S. Probation Office for three years. When asked for a comment, his lawyer did not answer right away.
The Justice Department said in a news statement that Kipf was first charged by a federal grand jury in November with five counts of computer fraud and three counts of aggravated identity theft. He was charged with breaking the law by getting into the websites of Arizona, Hawaii, and Vermont, as well as those of GuestTek Interactive Entertainment Ltd. and Milestone Inc.
This plan was criticized by Carlton S. Shier IV, who is the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky.
He said, “This case is a stark reminder of how bad criminals with computers can be and how very important it is for all of us to keep our computers and the internet safe.” “Thanks to the hard work of our law enforcement partners, this case will serve as a warning to other cybercriminals, and he will be punished for his shameful behavior.”