Facial Recognition Error Leads to Five-Month Detention of Tennessee Woman
A Tennessee grandmother spent nearly six months in custody after a facial recognition tool used by Fargo police incorrectly linked her to a bank fraud scheme in North Dakota, according to a report by WDAY. Angela Lipps, 50, was arrested at her home in July while babysitting four children, with U.S. marshals drawing guns at her doorstep. She was held without bail as a fugitive, first in a Tennessee jail and later in North Dakota, before the charges were dropped on Christmas Eve.
Lipps, who has lived her entire life in north-central Tennessee, told WDAY she had never been to North Dakota and knew no one there. The arrest stemmed from surveillance footage of a woman using a fake U.S. Army ID to withdraw tens of thousands of dollars from banks in April and May 2025. Detectives ran the footage through AI facial recognition software, which flagged Lipps as a match. Court documents show a detective agreed the suspect's facial features, body type, and hair matched Lipps, but no one from the Fargo police department ever contacted her for questioning.
Lipps was booked in a Tennessee county jail as a fugitive and held without bail for nearly four months. Fargo police did not pick her up until 108 days after her arrest, when she was flown to North Dakota for a court appearance. Her first interview with police occurred in December, after she had been behind bars for more than five months. Jay Greenwood, her attorney in North Dakota, produced bank records showing Lipps was more than 1,200 miles away in Tennessee at the time of the alleged fraud. Police released her on Christmas Eve and dropped the case.
Lack of Verification Raises Questions
Greenwood told WDAY that relying solely on facial recognition should prompt deeper investigation. “If the only thing you have is facial recognition, I might want to dig a little deeper,” he said. The case adds to a growing list of mistaken identifications involving AI tools. In April 2024, the New York Police Department arrested Trevis Williams based on a facial recognition match from grainy CCTV footage, despite Williams being over half a foot taller than the suspect. In February 2024, a Detroit woman sued the city police after a facial recognition tool identified her as a murder suspect, with similar physical discrepancies.
Lipps said she lost her home, her car, and her dog as a result of her detention. She was stranded in Fargo with no money for a return trip, and police did not offer to pay for her travel. Local defense attorneys pooled funds for a hotel room, and the nonprofit F5 Project arranged her trip back to Tennessee. She told WDAY, “I had my summer clothes on, no coat, it was so cold outside, snow on the ground, scared, I wanted out but I didn't know what I was going to do, how I was going to get home.” No apology has been offered by the Fargo police department, she said.
