A Kentucky man is facing several years behind bars for illegally accessing the online death registry system and faking his own death to avoid having to pay over $100,000 in child support to his ex-partner.
39-year-old Jesse Kipf admitted to accessing the death registry system in Hawaii using login details he had stolen from a doctor in the same state in January of last year. According to investigators, he created and assigned a file to himself in the system and impersonated the doctor to certify that he had died. Court documents show that Kipf also admitted to illegally accessing various websites run by the States of Arizona and Vermont, along with GuestTek Interactive Entertainment and Milestone, Inc., which led to him being listed as dead in several government databases. In a plea agreement, the defendant claimed that he committed these crimes, in part, to avoid paying outstanding child support to his former wife.