- The claim that Matthew Ingalls, one of seven Cornell University students accused of rape in a September lawsuit, fled to Dubai is still under investigation.
- The rumor stems from an article in the Daily Mail, a British tabloid, which cited an anonymous neighbor of Ingalls’ uncle, who said they believed the accused man is in Dubai.
- Using old yearbook photographs and searches of public records, Snopes was able to determine Matthew Ingalls also was known as Umar Matthew Ingalls, an alumnus of Dubai International Academy. While we know Ingalls lived in Dubai at some point, we cannot confirm his current whereabouts.
- Snopes will update this report if additional information surfaces. We have reached out to Ingalls, the Dubai International Academy, Ingalls’ former school in Washington state and the person tabloids identify as Ingalls’ father in Dubai and are waiting for responses.
In October, several weeks after a lawsuit was filed accusing seven male students at Cornell University of drugging and raping a female student in 2024, a rumor spread about the whereabouts of one of the accused men. According to the claim, Matthew Ingalls — who reportedly initiated the encounter with the accuser, named in court documents only as Jane Doe — fled to Dubai, where he previously lived.
Posts on Facebook (archived) and Instagram claimed Ingalls, who the posts said also goes by Umar Matthew Ingalls, was in Dubai with his family:
Umar Matthew Ingalls, one of the “Cornell 7” accused in the alleged 2024 gang rape at the Chi Phi house, is now reportedly in Dubai, where he grew up. Neighbors of his relatives in Connecticut told the Daily Mail they believe he’s back in the Middle East with his dad. How convenient.
Quick refresher on Mr. Ingalls. He’s the one Jane Doe says invited her to the house that night. He’s also the one who, according to messages filed in her lawsuit, shared a photo of her in the frat’s Snapchat group chat and wrote “Like you can walk in and whip it out.” The New York Post reports he added “Boys come whip it out.” Truly the words of a gentleman.
(Facebook user Feminist News)
The rumor originated from a report in the Daily Mail, a British tabliod, that relied on anonymous sources. Snopes is unable to verify Ingalls’ whereabouts as of this writing, so we have left this claim unrated. We have, however, found records of an Umar Ingalls who studied at the Dubai International Academy in Emirates Hills, Dubai, whose appearance matches that of Matthew Ingalls.
We have reached out to Ingalls — whom The New York Times reported had been expelled from Cornell — via his old college email address, to a person believed to be his father, to the Dubai International Academy and also to the Annie Wright School in Tacoma, Washington, where Ingalls reportedly studied as a child. We will update this story as we learn more.
The Daily Mail identified Ingalls as Umar Matthew Ingalls and spoke to an anonymous neighbor of Ingalls’ uncle in Connecticut, where Ingalls’ address was listed in court records. That neighbor reportedly told the tabloid Ingalls hadn’t been seen at the home in some time and that they thought he was in Dubai.
Our public records search for Umar Matthew Ingalls found his name appeared connected to an address in South Dartmouth, Massachusetts, that also was linked to the name Matthew B. Ingalls.
The Daily Mail identified Ingalls’ father as a Yale-educated professor at the American University in Dubai. We found a Matthew B. Ingalls listed as an associate professor of Middle Eastern studies at the American University in Dubai. Snopes reached out to him to verify his identity and relationship to Ingalls and will update this story as we get more information.
Several purported photographs of Matthew Ingalls have circulated, including one showing him wearing a Cornell rugby T-shirt and another from what appears to be his now-deleted LinkedIn account. According to the university’s student newspaper, The Cornell Daily Sun, the school’s rugby club confirmed Ingalls was previously a part of its roster.
We found that Ingalls’ image from his deleted LinkedIn account had SynthID markers — which are inserted into images created with some generative artificial intelligence platforms — and was thus likely edited with AI. However, the photograph of Ingalls in his rugby shirt did not. We then compared that photograph to other images we found of him and found several matches.
Dubai International Academy’s 2022-23 yearbook identifies Umar Ingalls as a member of the class of 2023 and part of the athletics team. The person in the yearbook photo appears to be the same person wearing the Cornell rugby shirt.
(Dubai International Academy)
Umar Ingalls also was mentioned in a 2022 story in the Khaleej Times, a Dubai newspaper. The article reported on a group of students who created their own version of a lunar rover. The accompanying photograph is blurry, but the student in the back right has a strong resemblance to Ingalls.
A 2020 blog post on the website for Annie Wright Schools, an elite private school in Tacoma, Washington, identified Umar Ingalls as half-American. He appeared to have studied at the Lower School until 2016 and lived in Dubai at the time the article was written. He commented on how Americans were perceived in Dubai after the election victory of U.S. President Donald Trump.
For further reading, we have previously reported on numerous rumors about the Cornell rape case.
