Angela Lipps while in Cass County
A case of mistaken identity involving AI facial recognition software has led to a civil lawsuit and national scrutiny after a Tennessee grandmother spent more than 5 months in jail for a crime she did not commit, according to first reporting by Matt Henson of WDAY.
Angela Lipps, 50, was wrongly identified by Fargo police as the perpetrator of a multi-city bank fraud scheme, according to records obtained by WDAY. Fargo police initially pressed charges when the software led them to Lipps. Angela’s lawyer, Jay Greenwood, found in her bank records that she had been buying things in Tennessee at the same time she was alleged to have been committing bank fraud in North Dakota. This prompted her very first interview with police. She was released from jail a few days later, left stranded with no way to get home.
WDAY found that when West Fargo police used the software for a similar case, Lipps also came up as a suspect, though they notably declined to file similar charges, because they found the AI identification alone to be insufficient evidence.
Reports show that after being identified using the software, Lipps was listed as the prime suspect in four of seven cases in the Fargo-Moorhead area.
Matt Henson reports that Lipps has lost everything as a result of being unable to pay bills from jail, and she is now pursuing a civil lawsuit.
This case coincides with the abrupt retirement of Fargo Police Chief Dave Zibolski, and questions have been raised as to whether this is connected to the case of Angela Lipps. Zibolski says the reasoning is to spend more time with family. When WDAY asked Fargo Mayor Tim Mahoney if the two are connected, he declined to answer.
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