A Kentucky father admits to faking his death to avoid paying his ex-wife over $100,000 in unpaid child support.
Jesse Kipf, 38, pled guilty to one count of aggravated identity theft and one count of computer fraud in federal court on March 29, according to a plea deal acquired by Law & Crime.
According to a news statement, Kipf was indicted by the United States Attorney’s Office in November after agents from the FBI in Louisville, Kentucky, the Department of the Attorney General for Hawaii, and the Pulaski County Sheriff’s Office became aware of his cybercrimes.
Kipf acknowledged to filling out a Hawaii Death Certificate Worksheet in January 2023, when he made a false death certificate for himself and “assigned himself as the medical certifier for the case and certified that case.”
Prosecutors claimed that his motivation for committing the cybercrimes stemmed from his desire to avoid paying “his outstanding child support obligations to his ex-wife,” according to the plea bargain.
The still-living father then “infiltrated other states’ death registry systems” with stolen passwords, according to the plea bargain.
“He applied a digital signature for [the physician], providing his name, title, and license number. This resulted in the Defendant being registered as deceased in many government databases.”
However, his unlawful online activities did not stop with faking his death. Kipf also utilised the credentials he stole to gain access to private commercial, government, and corporate networks, with the intention of selling the sensitive information he fraudulently gained to other criminals online.
“In doing so, the Defendant caused damage to multiple computer networks and stole the identities of numerous individuals,” according to the plea agreement.
Kipf was charged in January with computer fraud in connection with data breaches at GuestTek Interactive Entertainment in February 2023 and Milestone Inc. in June 2023.
According to court filings, authorities calculated Kipf’s damages for failing to pay child support and acquiring access to the networks to be more than $195,000.
According to the plea agreement, the computer-hacking father agreed to pay $3,500 in restitution to the state of Hawaii, $56,247 to Milestone Inc., $19,653 to GuestTek Interactive Entertainment, and $116,357 to the California child support agency.
He also agreed to give over his personal equipment and $16,218 in gold and silver coins.
Kipf was initially charged with five counts of computer fraud and three counts of aggravated identity theft, each carrying a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison, before many of those charges were dismissed after he accepted the plea deal.
His sentencing hearing is set for April 12 in federal court in Frankfort, Kentucky. According to the plea agreement, Kipf now faces up to five years in federal prison for aggravated identity theft and a minimum of two years for computer fraud, each with a $250,000 fine.
