March 31, 2026 A U.S. woman spent nearly six months in jail after being misidentified by an AI facial recognition system in a bank fraud investigation. She was later cleared only after records proved she was far away at the time of the alleged crimes and couldn’t have committed them.
Angela Lipps, a 50-year-old grandmother from Tennessee, was arrested in July after Fargo police in North Dakota used facial recognition software to link her to fraud cases involving tens of thousands of dollars. She was charged with multiple counts of identity theft and theft, despite stating she had never been to North Dakota.
According to police records, investigators reviewed surveillance footage and concluded Lipps matched the suspect based on facial features, body type and hairstyle. Lipps said she was not contacted before her arrest and was taken into custody at her home while babysitting children.
She remained in a Tennessee jail for nearly four months without bail before being extradited to North Dakota. In total, she spent close to six months detained before her attorney obtained bank records showing she was more than 1,200 miles away at the time of the alleged crimes.
Her lawyer, Jay Greenwood, said: “If the only thing you have is facial recognition, I might want to dig a little deeper.”
Lipps was released on Christmas Eve after the records were presented to investigators. She said authorities did not arrange her return home, leaving local legal advocates and a non-profit organisation to assist with travel and accommodation.
The consequences extended beyond the case itself. Lipps said she lost her home, car and pet while detained and has not received an apology from law enforcement.
The incident is not isolated. Other recent cases include a student in Baltimore detained after an AI system misidentified an object as a weapon, and a man in the UK arrested for a burglary in a city he had never visited due to facial recognition errors.
