A Kentucky father is in hot water after he admitted last week that he faked his death to avoid paying his ex-wife more than $100,000 in outstanding child support payments.
Jesse Kipf, 38, pleaded guilty to one count of aggravated identity theft and one count of computer fraud in federal court, according to a plea agreement obtained by Law & Crime. Now, Kipf is facing a lengthy prison sentence over his actions.
The United States Attorney’s Office indicted Kipf in November after FBI investigators in Louisville, the Department of the Attorney General for Hawaii, and the Pulaski County Sheriff’s Office were notified of his cyber crimes, a press release shared.
Kipf admitted that in 2023, he completed a Hawaii Death Certificate Worksheet, where he created a fake death certificate for himself and “assigned himself as the medical certifier for the case and certified that case.”
The plea agreement says that prosecutors pointed to “his outstanding child support obligations to his ex-wife” as the reason for his cyber crimes.
After he falsified the documents, he then “infiltrated other states’ death registry systems” using credentials that he had stolen, the plea agreement said.
It went on to say that 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.”
But faking his death wasn’t the end, as he also used the stolen credentials to gain access to private business, government, and corporate networks. The plea agreement says that he was attempting to obtain information to then sell to other online criminals.
“In doing so, the Defendant caused damage to multiple computer networks and stole the identities of numerous individuals,” according to the plea agreement.
Authorities have estimated the damages resulting from Kipf skipping out on his child support payments and committing cyber crimes exceeded more than $195,000, court documents showed, the New York Post reported.
In the plea deal, Kipf has now agreed to pay $3,500 in restitution to the state of Hawaii, $19,653 to GuestTek Interactive Entertainment, $56,247 to Milestone Inc., and $116,357 to the California child support agency.
Sentencing is scheduled for this coming week, and Kipf is facing a maximum of five years in federal prison.