Marine’s family reports threats after ‘Cornell 7’ lawsuit mix-up

A Marine Corps sergeant’s family said they have been subjected to abuse after the service member was served with a lawsuit meant for one of the accused in a Cornell University sexual assault case — all because the two share the same name.

Sgt. Matthew Ingalls, 23, is a New York native, and he has never attended the Ivy League university. He was also already serving on active duty in the Marine Corps at the time of an alleged October 2024 assault that has put Cornell in the national spotlight.

But when his family answered a knock at the door of their New York home the evening of Sept. 26, his mother, Victoria Ingalls, was handed a 101-page civil lawsuit intended for someone with the same name as her son, The Free Press first reported Thursday. The intended recipient was among the seven members of the Chi Phi fraternity accused of sexually assaulting a female student.

“My family’s been terrorized, threatened, and harassed,” Victoria Ingalls told The Free Press.

The family had begun receiving unusual messages just before the lawsuit arrived, Ingalls told Stars and Stripes in an interview Saturday.

“[Matthew] started getting a lot of messages asking him if he ever went to Cornell, calling him a rapist, all kinds of crazy aggressive messages,” Victoria said. “Then my daughter was getting messages as well, and she didn’t know what was going on.”

The Cornell case has attracted attention in recent weeks amid criticism of the university’s handling of the sexual assault allegations, particularly disciplinary measures that critics have argued were insufficient.

The woman who filed the Sept. 16 civil lawsuit said in the suit that she was pressured into using drugs and alcohol to the point she was incapable of consenting to sex, according to The Associated Press. The woman, named “Jane Doe” in the suit, reported the incident to campus police in 2024. The local district attorney’s office opted not to prosecute anyone at the time, but it reopened the criminal investigation Monday.

The Marine Ingalls currently serves as a machinist with Combat Logistics Battalion 26 at Camp Lejeune, N.C., according to his Marine Corps personnel file.

Camp Lejeune officials released a statement to personnel and families this week on behalf of Sgt. Ingalls, clarifying he was not the individual named in the lawsuit and was serving “honorably,” according to Victoria. Stars and Stripes had not received a copy of the statement as of Saturday.

Court records listed the Marine’s information instead of that of the Cornell student with the same name, resulting in the lawsuit being delivered to Victoria and her husband.

Victoria told Stars and Stripes she sought legal counsel after receiving the lawsuit. She has gathered records documenting her son’s military service and other information to establish that he was not the defendant identified in the allegations.

As attention surrounding the case intensified, people began circulating details about the misidentified family, including phone numbers and their home addresses, and sending threatening messages intended for the Cornell student.

Victoria and her children have all been on the receiving end of many of these messages for the last week, she said. She also said trash and other items have been thrown onto the family’s property in New York since the messages began.

“This was a gross error,” Ingalls said. “I just still can’t understand how they got to my Matthew Ingalls.”

She said telling people they had contacted the wrong family did not always stop the messages.

“The people that are posting his address, that are saying, ‘I will find you. I will end you. I will kill you,’ types of things are the scariest,” Ingalls said.

Victoria Ingalls said the family has received a slew of threatening texts after the family’s phone numbers were leaked. Several to her 26-year-old daughter additionally portrayed threats of death and assault.