AI error lands Tennessee grandma in jail for 5 months after she's flagged in bank fraud case

A Tennessee woman was erroneously arrested and detained for after an AI facial recognition tool used by police flagged her as a suspect in a bank fraud case in North Dakota. She had never even visited North Dakota but was jailed for five months.

Angela Lipps, 50, was arrested in her rental home in Tennessee and then taken by authorities to North Dakota three months later. The West Fargo Police Department used facial recognition technology that flagged the grandmother as a suspect in the case. The police chief, Dave Zibolski, claimed that the department used “additional investigative steps independent of AI to assist in identification” to confirm she was the suspect.

However, he later admitted in a press conference on Tuesday that the facial recognition system was “part of the issue” in the wrongful arrest. The department had used Clearview AI, and “identified a potential suspect with similar features to Angela Lipps," per CNN.

In a GoFundMe launched for the grandmother, she said, "My name is Angela Lipps. I'm a 50 year old grandmother from Elizabethton, Tennessee. I have three grown children and five grandchildren. I have never been to North Dakota or even any of the surrounding states. I've never visited Minnesota, South Dakota, lowa, or anywhere else near North Dakota. On July 14th, 2025 a team of US Marshals showed up at my home while I was babysitting four young children. They arrested me at gunpoint and took me away. Until then I had never had a gun pointed at me. These poor children saw everything happen. It breaks my heart. They were so scared."

Lipps said that she wasn't called and nobody asked her any questions, that police just got a warrant and put her in jail. When she finally touched down in Fargo three months after being jailed, she got a lawyer to obtain bank records that she was in Tennessee when the fraud took place.

She wrote in the GoFundMe, “It took five minutes for the whole thing to fall apart. Five minutes."

Later on December 23, over five months since Lipps was arrested, the North Dakota Attorney and judge “mutually agreed to dismiss the charges without prejudice to allow for further investigation."

She was released on Christmas Eve, but Lipps' reputation had been tarnished and her rental home was gone. Her belongings had been seized because her storage bills went unpaid. "No one from the Fargo Police Department has apologized. I pleaded with the US Marshals to get my dentures and take them to jail with me but they refused. For six months I had no dentures."