US man who faked death to avoid $100,000 in child support gets six years in prison

After registering as deceased person, Jesse Kipf of Kentucky then hacked death registry systems and sold access to them

A southern Kentucky man who admitted to faking his death while attempting to avoid paying more than $100,000 in child support that he owed to his ex-wife has been ordered to spend more than six years in federal prison.

Jesse Kipf’s punishment for pleading guilty to charges of computer fraud and identity theft essentially closes the book on one of the stranger hacking cases seen in the US criminal justice system.

According to court papers that he endorsed with his signature, the 39-year-old Kipf accessed the Hawaii state government’s computer registry of dead people in early 2023, impersonated a medical certifier and falsely certified that he had died as he sought to skimp on child support obligations to his former wife.