Tennessee woman sues for $10m after wrongful arrest tied to AI facial recognition error
Fargo police used AI facial recognition that wrongly identified a Tennessee woman as a bank fraud suspect, leading to her six-month detention before charges were dropped.
Angela Lipps, 50, of Tennessee has filed a $10m federal lawsuit against the city of Fargo, North Dakota, and police detective Lucas Heck, alleging she was wrongfully arrested and prosecuted for bank theft based on a flawed AI facial recognition match.
Lipps was arrested at gunpoint by US marshals in July 2025 at her Tennessee home while babysitting her neighbor's children. She spent almost four months in a county jail awaiting extradition, then roughly two more months detained in North Dakota after being flown there for the first time in her life at the end of October. She was charged with four counts of unauthorized use of personal identifying information and four counts of theft.
The charges were eventually dropped after her attorney, Jay Greenwood, presented bank records proving she was in Tennessee when the fraud occurred in Fargo. She was released on Christmas Eve into freezing weather with no way home.
How the misidentification happened
According to the complaint, a west Fargo police investigator used facial recognition software during a bank fraud investigation, and the system flagged Lipps's social media photo as a possible lead. The actual source of the match was reportedly a fake ID used by a female suspect caught on surveillance footage — a person Lipps does not resemble and a state she had never visited.
The lawsuit claims Heck did not conduct adequate further investigation before requesting an arrest warrant, and alleges the Fargo police department lacked proper policy, training and supervision governing use of facial recognition technology. A Fargo city spokesperson declined to comment, citing the pending litigation.
Lipps's complaint describes being denied her medication and dentures while jailed, missing family holidays and her own birthday in custody, and later discovering she had lost her home, car and belongings after her release.
