Jesse Kipf, 39, has been sentenced to 81 months in federal prison after attempting to fake his death by hacking into state registries and falsifying official records to avoid paying child support. Kipf reached a plea agreement, admitting to the offence and has been ordered to pay more than $195,000 for damages to computer systems and the remaining total of his child support.
Kipf was divorced in 2008, but his hacking scheme didn’t begin until January 2023. According to his plea agreement, Kipf intentionally accessed a computer without authorization and then obtained information from a protected computer for his own private gain and in furtherance of identity theft.
Initially, he accessed Hawaii’s death registry system using credentials taken from a doctor living in another state and created a case for his death. He then completed the State of Hawaii Death Certificate Worksheet, assigned himself as the medical certifier for the case, and certified his death using the doctor’s digital signature. This resulted in Kipf appearing as a deceased person in multiple government databases.
Additionally, Kipf also hacked other states’ death registry systems, private business networks, and governmental and corporate networks using credentials stolen from real people. He then attempted to sell the stolen credentials on the dark web.
Under federal law, Kipf must serve 85 per cent of his prison sentence and will be under the supervision of the US Probation Office for three years after his release. “This scheme was a cynical and destructive effort, based in part on the inexcusable goal of avoiding his child support obligations,” said Carlton S. Shier, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky, in an official statement.
In the News: WazirX launches legal restructuring and partial INR withdrawals
