A former Milford man who posed as an FBI agent and defrauded a woman he met on a dating app out of $167,000 was sentenced Thursday to 30 months in federal prison, capping a case that exposed a pattern of fraud stretching back nearly a decade.
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A former Milford man who posed as an FBI agent and defrauded a woman he met on a dating app out of $167,000 was sentenced Thursday to 30 months in federal prison, capping a case that exposed a pattern of fraud stretching back nearly a decade.
Marc Anthony Alexander, 45, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Sarah F. Russell in New Haven for conspiracy to commit wire fraud and unlawful possession of a firearm by a felon. He will serve two years of supervised release after his prison term.
Prosecutors say Alexander and a co-conspirator, Melanie Ham of Norwalk, lured a Connecticut woman into investing in a sham business called Traveling Graces LLC between July and December 2023.
Alexander, who had met the victim on a dating app, presented himself as “Dr. Marc Anthony Alexander” and falsely portrayed the company as a legitimate business seeking investors. The victim handed over two bank checks totaling $167,000, which Alexander and Ham spent for their own benefit.
The firearm charge arose from a separate incident in May 2024, when Alexander approached an employee at his residential complex claiming to be an FBI agent who needed extra parking spaces. He wore clothing bearing FBI markings, displayed a fake FBI badge and was carrying a Hellcat 9mm pistol in a holster.
Alexander has a lengthy criminal record. He was released from federal prison in February 2023 after serving time for two earlier fraud convictions — one involving the theft of postal money orders that cost the U.S. Postal Service more than $300,000, and another involving the fraudulent sale of financed vehicles that defrauded lenders of more than $1 million. In April 2017, he was sentenced to eight years in prison.
His troubles continued almost immediately after his release. In February 2024, Stamford police arrested him on charges including drunken driving and operating a vehicle without insurance. He also allegedly used a doctored bank statement to buy a car from a Massachusetts dealership, lied to his probation officer about his address, left Connecticut without permission and opened nine new lines of credit — all violations of his supervised release conditions. A Hartford federal court sentenced him in February 2025 to two additional years for those violations.
Ham pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud in November and awaits sentencing.
The FBI investigated the case, which is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Ray Miller.
