Tennessee Grandmother Sues North Dakota City Over AI-Led Wrongful Detention

A grandmother from Tennessee has initiated a lawsuit against a North Dakota city and its police department, accusing them of mistakenly detaining her for nearly six months due to flawed artificial intelligence facial recognition technology used in investigating a bank theft.

Angela Lipps, 50, from Elizabethton, Tennessee, was taken into custody while caring for her neighbor’s children, after police arrived and arrested her at gunpoint in July 2025.

The lawsuit filed on September 15, 2026, claims that authorities relied solely on an inaccurate AI facial recognition match to extradite Lipps from Tennessee to North Dakota, despite her lack of connection to the crime or the state.

Experts specializing in police technology informed Fox News Digital that this case is one among over a dozen instances of facial recognition technology misuse by the police.

“I sat in a county jail in Tennessee for 108 days. They said I was a fugitive from justice. I had no bail. No one interviewed me. I just sat and waited,” Lipps expressed on a GoFundMe post.

According to the lawsuit, the bank fraud occurred in April and May 2025, when an unidentified woman allegedly utilized fake IDs and stolen identities to execute bank fraud in Fargo and West Fargo, North Dakota.

Officials employed a photo from a fraudulent ID provided by the suspect, instead of utilizing surveillance footage, to conduct facial recognition searches using Clearview AI, prosecutors stated.

Clearview AI’s guidelines necessitate treating facial recognition matches as potential leads. However, Fargo police reportedly viewed the AI match as a confirmed identification, without revealing that it wasn’t independently verified.

The West Fargo Police Department reportedly refused to press charges because the AI match hadn’t been corroborated, with a captain terming AI facial recognition as “close to a last-ditch effort” in investigations.

According to the lawsuit, Detective Lucas Heck neglected to check Lipps’ financial or travel records indicating her presence in Tennessee during the bank fraud and failed to conduct photo lineups with bank tellers. Surveillance footage reportedly showed discrepancies in physical appearance between Lipps and the suspect, such as Lipps having a different build and a neck tattoo absent on the suspect.

The complaint claims that Heck disregarded, hid, and misrepresented evidence showing Lipps was innocent.

Authorities purportedly detained Lipps at gunpoint in Tennessee on July 14, 2025, due to a nationwide warrant. She was extradited to North Dakota and initially held on a $100,000 bond, facing eight felony charges, the most severe having maximum penalties of up to 10 years in prison.

Prosecutors dropped all charges on December 24, 2025, after Lipps presented bank records showing her presence in Tennessee during the bank theft incidents. Following her release, Lipps found her residence, car, and personal belongings gone.

In a subsequent March 2026 press conference, Fargo officials acknowledged investigative errors related to the police department’s use of facial recognition technology.

“When chief discovered errors in where we obtained our facial recognition and how it functioned, we immediately addressed it,” Mayor Tim Mahoney commented.

Clare Garvie, deputy director of Technology Law & Policy with the Policing Project, explained to Fox News Digital that incidents involving AI mishandlings have risen as law enforcement agencies aim to “integrate AI and other tools into investigations.”

Garvie remarked, “We are aware of 16 instances of wrongful arrests due to face recognition mismatches, with individuals spending time imprisoned. In many such cases, further investigative steps weren’t undertaken to affirm or refute the face recognition match.”

Nate Freed-Wessler, deputy director at the American Civil Liberties Union, mentioned to Fox News Digital that the escalating use of AI in police work has led to numerous wrongful arrests nationwide.

“We’ve observed such wrongful arrests over the last five or six years due to AI technology, and their frequency appears to be rising,” he stated.

He noted, “There have been cases where police consciously avoid documenting their use of facial recognition technology or other forms of AI.”