Problems with alias forwarding using qmail + dbmail 2.1.6

I have a mail server that is running qmail and dbmail 2.1.6 and the setup is working well in terms of being able to receive emails and put them in the local mailboxes correctly. However it seems to be having trouble with forwarding setup, in particular the problem seems to be the parsing of the "From:" line of the original email.

The following is an excerpt from the logs of dbmail trying to deliver to an external address:

Jun 22 15:20:16 mail dbmail/smtp[11132]: pipe.c, insert_messages: deliver [1] messages to external addresses
Jun 22 15:20:16 mail dbmail/smtp[11132]: pipe.c, insert_messages: delivering to external addresses
Jun 22 15:20:16 mail dbmail/smtp[11132]: pipe.c, send_forward_list: delivering to [1] external addresses
Jun 22 15:20:16 mail dbmail/smtp[11132]: pipe.c, send_mail: sendmail command is [/usr/sbin/sendmail]
Jun 22 15:20:16 mail dbmail/smtp[11132]: pipe.c, send_mail: opening pipe to [/usr/sbin/sendmail -f Maria\ Khomenko\ \< mariadomain.com\> gmail.com" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)"> maria.khomenkogmail.com]
Jun 22 15:20:16 mail dbmail/smtp[11132]: pipe.c, send_mail: pipe opened
Jun 22 15:20:16 mail dbmail/smtp[11132]: db.c,db_send_message_lines: request for [-2] lines
Jun 22 15:20:16 mail dbmail/smtp[11132]: dbmysql.c,db_query: query [SELECT physmessage_id FROM dbmail_messages WHERE m essage_idnr = '591125']
Jun 22 15:20:16 mail dbmail/smtp[11132]: db.c,db_send_message_lines: sending [-2] lines from message [591125]
Jun 22 15:20:16 mail dbmail/smtp[11132]: dbmysql.c,db_query: query [SELECT messageblk FROM dbmail_messageblks WHERE ph ysmessage_id = '295598' ORDER BY messageblk_idnr]
Jun 22 15:20:16 mail dbmail/smtp[11132]: dbmail-message.c,_set_content_from_stream: parse message
Jun 22 15:20:16 mail dbmail/smtp[11132]: pipe.c, send_mail: pipe closed
Jun 22 15:20:16 mail dbmail/smtp[11132]: pipe.c, send_mail: sendmail error [25600]
Jun 22 15:20:16 mail dbmail/smtp[11132]: dbmysql.c,db_query: query [SELECT physmessage_id FROM dbmail_messages WHERE m essage_idnr = '591124']
Jun 22 15:20:16 mail dbmail/smtp[11132]: dbmysql.c,db_query: query [DELETE FROM dbmail_messages WHERE message_idnr = ' 591124']
Jun 22 15:20:16 mail dbmail/smtp[11132]: dbmysql.c,db_query: query [SELECT message_idnr FROM dbmail_messages WHERE phy smessage_id = '295598']

/usr/sbin/sendmail in the log above is a symlink to /var/qmail/bin/sendmail and the problem is apparently with the sendmail command. If I try to execute it separately on the command line, i.e. /var/qmail/bin/sendmail -f Maria\ Khomenko\ \< mariadomain.com\> gmail.com" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">maria.khomenkogmail.com, I get the following error:

qmail-inject: fatal: unable to parse this line:
From: "Maria Khomenko <maria&quot; domain.com>

I was wondering if anyone has seen this problem before and perhaps can offer advice on how to fix this.
Thanks,