A 50-year-old grandmother from Tennessee claims she was arrested after artificial intelligence facial recognition software used by police in Fargo, North Dakota, falsely linked her to alleged bank fraud.
Angela Lipps alleged she was arrested at gunpoint July 14 by U.S. Marshals at her Tennessee home while she was babysitting four young children, according to a statement shared in a GoFundMe fundraiser. Lipps said she did not learn she’d been linked to the case until “after many days in jail.”
“What I later learned, after many days in jail is that police in Fargo, North Dakota had been investigating a bank fraud case. A woman used a fake military ID to steal tens of thousands of dollars from banks in Fargo. The cops ran surveillance footage through facial recognition software. That AI software said it was me. A detective looked at my Tennessee driver’s license and my social media and agreed. Nobody called me. Nobody asked me a single question. They just got a warrant,” Lipps alleged, according to the same fundraiser.
Lipps said she was incarcerated in a Tennessee county jail for 108 days.
She was extradited to North Dakota in October, her attorneys and Fargo police stated, according to CNN.
After she’d arrived in North Dakota, Lipps’ attorney pulled her bank records, which proved she “was in Tennessee the entire time” the alleged bank fraud occurred, she stated in the GoFundMe. The charges against Lipps were dismissed on Christmas Eve after she spent five months in jail.
While Lipps is now a free woman, she says being falsely imprisoned resulted in her losing her rental home, dog, health insurance, Social Security income, and time with her family, according to the same fundraiser. (RELATED: Police Charge County Official With 89 Felonies)
“The West Fargo Police Department was involved in the investigation of an unauthorized use of personal identification case,” a spokesperson for the West Fargo Police Department told the Daily Caller in a statement. “The primary person of interest in this case matched similar incidents that took place in the City of Fargo. West Fargo Police Department Officers requested the Intelligence Unit attempt to identify a person of interest using facial recognition software.”
“The nationally recognized facial recognition software, Clearview AI, identified a potential suspect with similar features to Angela Lipps. That intelligence information was then shared with the Fargo Police Department, at their request, in relation to their open cases,” the statement continued.
“The West Fargo Police Department did not forward any charges to the Cass County State’s Attorney’s Office regarding Angela Lipps. Detectives did not have enough evidence to charge any person of interest for the incident that took place in the City of West Fargo,” the spokesperson added.
“Any referral of charges would have been handled solely by the Fargo Police Department in relation to the case referenced,” the spokesperson said.
Lipps said she’d never been to North Dakota ahead of her arrest and did not know anyone in the state, according to Inforum. She also has no plans to return.
“I’m just glad it’s over. I’ll never go back to North Dakota,” Lipps told the outlet.
In 2025, armed police officers handcuffed and searched a high school student in Baltimore County, Maryland, after an AI security system allegedly mistakenly identified his empty bag of chips as a potential firearm, CNN reported.