John Jefferson
Jesse Kipf (Grayson County Detention Center)
A federal judge sentenced a 39-year-old Kentucky man to 81 months — six years and nine months — in prison for faking his own death to avoid paying over $100,000 in child support.
Jesse Kipf pleaded guilty in April to hacking into a state database to create a fake death certificate so he would be officially listed as a dead man. Prosecutors in a sentencing memo called Kipf a “serial hacker” who infiltrates protected computer networks “with abandon.”
“He caused significant damage, both monetarily and in the form of technological responses, to his corporate and governmental victims,” prosecutors wrote. “By attempting to kill himself off to avoid child support obligations, the defendant continues to re-victimize his daughter and her mother, who are owed more than $116,000 in child support obligations.”
Prosecutors argued the harsh prison sentence would send a message to other potential hackers who may want to pull the same scheme as Kipf.
“Operating criminal enterprises online generates a distance between the perpetrator and the victims, so much so that taking advantage of members of others can feel as illusory as playing a video game. This detachment breeds a lack of sympathy, which encourages hackers to continue to engage in criminal behavior,” they wrote.
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Kipf’s attorneys in their sentencing memo said he suffers paranoid delusions and schizophrenic tendencies which led to the downfall of his marriage and set him down a path of criminal behavior. He also served in the military and was deployed to Afghanistan for about a year. His lawyers said the psychological trauma he suffered during the war furthered his drug addiction.
But prosecutors weren’t buying the excuses.
“This scheme was a cynical and destructive effort, based in part on the inexcusable goal of avoiding his child support obligations,” Carlton S. Shier, IV, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky, said in a statement. “This case is a stark reminder of how damaging criminals with computers can be, and how critically important computer and online security is to us all.”
According to the plea agreement, Kipf accessed the Hawaii Death Registry System by posing as a physician in a different state.
“He completed a State of Hawaii Death Certificate Worksheet, and then, on January 21, 2023, the Defendant assigned himself as the medical certifier for the case and certified that case,” the plea agreement says. “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.”
Kipf “also infiltrated other states’ death registry systems” using credentials stolen from other people.
“The Defendant faked his own death, in part, in order to avoid his outstanding child support obligations to his ex-wife,” the plea agreement says.
He also admitted using stolen credentials to infiltrate private business, government and corporate networks and then trying to sell access to those networks to potential online buyers.
“In doing so, the Defendant caused damage to multiple computer networks and stole the identities of numerous individuals,” says the plea agreement.
The estimated cost of damages was more than $195,000, according to the filing.
Marisa Sarnoff contributed to this report
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