On the evening of September 26, there was a knock on the door of a home in New York. Matthew Ingalls, a 23-year-old U.S. Marine Corps staff sergeant, signed for a 101-page lawsuit — one he had nothing to do with. He had never set foot at Cornell University; the suit was meant for another man with the exact same name. But once the family address landed in the public court docket, internet sleuths came knocking too: addresses and phone numbers were posted online, and death threats followed.
The lawsuit was filed on September 18: a woman identified only as Jane Doe accused seven members of Cornell's Chi Phi fraternity of gang rape in October 2024 and sued them in civil court. The process server delivered it to the wrong Matthew Ingalls — one of the actual defendants shares his name. Worse, the plaintiff's attorneys mistakenly entered the Ingalls family's home address into the public case file.
Even before the papers arrived, Ingalls and his sister began receiving bizarre messages from strangers: "Did you ever go to Cornell?" "Rapist!" After the service, the harassment escalated into outright death threats, including messages like: "I will find you. I will end you. I will kill you."
On October 6, Ingalls filed a motion asking the court to strip his family's address from the proceedings. He explained that at the time of the alleged assault, he was stationed at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina and had never attended Cornell.
Presiding Judge Perry-Bond ordered parts of the complaint sealed and, in an unusually blunt ruling, called out the harassers: certain "vigilantes" had "used an erroneous address to inundate a former Marine and his family with threats, simply because of a name shared with a defendant in the case," she wrote, adding that "that behavior must cease immediately" and is "completely unacceptable." She described the campaign as "brash, reckless and ultimately dangerous internet vigilantism" and warned everyone involved — "the public, parties, or their attorneys" — to "do their part in bringing the temperature down before someone gets hurt."
Ingalls' mother Victoria, who works as a paralegal, says the family has been "terrorized, threatened and harassed" since the address went public, and that she has barely been able to work or sleep. She told reporters she was stunned by the behavior: people look someone up online, grab a phone number, and start texting and calling with vile abuse — "You don't even know if you have the right person. You're creating more victims."
Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune issued a statement clarifying that Ingalls was not the individual named in the suit and that he was serving "honorably" at the time of the alleged assault.
The mistaken-identity ordeal unfolded at the peak of the Cornell case's media frenzy. The local district attorney had declined to bring criminal charges against the seven men, and New York Attorney General Letitia James has since appointed a special prosecutor to reopen the criminal investigation. On social media, two opposing campaigns collided: an "I am Jane Doe" solidarity movement, with women posting videos to protect the plaintiff's identity, and others offering to unmask her. Both sides were doxxing — and the collateral damage landed on a military family that had never set foot at Cornell.
John Manly, the attorney representing the Ingalls family, said the family is weighing legal action against the harassers, including possible criminal charges. His message to those sending threats was blunt: "If you are sending threatening messages, we will find you and go after you."
Whether the judge's sealing order cools the online hunt remains to be seen. But the saga of the wrong Matthew Ingalls already carries a warning: before the facts were even established, keyboard "justice" had manufactured new victims.