Tennessee Grandmother Arrested Due to AI Facial Recognition Mistake Tying Her to Fraudulent Activity

A Tennessee grandmother is striving to piece her life back together after a shocking case of mistaken identity. This unfortunate incident involving an artificial intelligence (AI) facial recognition system erroneously connected her to an ongoing bank fraud investigation in North Dakota.

Angela Lipps, 50, experienced almost six months of incarceration after the Fargo police identified her as a suspect in a systematic bank fraud operation. This revelation came to light through local news outlet InForum, which reported that Lipps had never set foot in North Dakota nor participated in any criminal acts related to the case.

Primarily residing in north-central Tennessee, Lipps, a mother of three and grandmother of five, led a quiet life. Before this incident, she had never boarded a plane—something that changed when authorities transported her to North Dakota last year to face charges she had not committed.

In July, U.S. marshals apprehended Lipps at her residence in Tennessee while she was caring for four children. The dramatic event unfolded when she claims she was taken away at gunpoint, marked as a fugitive from justice by North Dakota officials.

“I’ve never been to North Dakota, I don’t know anyone from North Dakota,” Lipps recounted to WDAY News.

Lipps spent nearly four months in jail in Tennessee without bail while she awaited extradition, charged with four counts of unauthorized use of personal identification and four counts of theft.

Fargo police records revealed that detectives were actively scrutinizing bank fraud cases during April and May 2025. They reviewed surveillance footage showing a woman using a counterfeit U.S. army military ID to withdraw substantial sums of money.

The officers reportedly relied on facial recognition software to wrongly identify Lipps as the suspect. According to court documents, a detective asserted that Lipps appeared to fit the suspect’s profile concerning features, body type, and hairstyle.

Lipps maintained to WDAY News that she had never been contacted by anyone from the Fargo police department prior to her arrest.

Authorities in North Dakota delayed moving Lipps from Tennessee until late October, a full 108 days after her apprehension, as reported by InForum. She faced her charges in a North Dakota courtroom the following day.

Her attorney, Jay Greenwood, remarked: “If the only evidence you have is facial recognition, I would certainly advocate investigating a bit deeper before making such serious accusations.”

Eventually, on Christmas Eve, Lipps was released after Greenwood acquired her bank records, which proved she was over 1,200 miles away in Tennessee when the fraudulent activities were alleged to have occurred in Fargo.

Despite her release, Lipps shared that the Fargo police did not facilitate her return trip home, leaving her stranded. Fortunately, local defense attorneys pooled resources to help her secure a hotel room and meals on Christmas Eve and Day. Additionally, a local nonprofit, the F5 Project, enabled her to return to Tennessee, according to InForum.

Now back in her home state, Lipps reflects on the lasting effects of the ordeal. She revealed that while imprisoned and unable to maintain financial obligations, she lost her family home, car, and dog. In her conversations with WDAY News, she emphasized that no one from the Fargo police department reached out to offer an apology.

This incident is not an isolated case of AI malfunctioning and misidentifying suspects. In a noteworthy incident in October, an AI system mistakenly identified a Baltimore high school student’s bag of Doritos as a firearm, triggering a police response. Taki Allen became the center of attention when officers approached him with guns drawn, ordering him to kneel while searching for an alleged weapon, which they found to be nonexistent.

Earlier this year, authorities in the UK arrested a man concerning a burglary in a city he had never even visited. This arrest followed face-scanning software mistaking him for another individual of similar appearance, resulting in significant distress for the innocent man wrongly implicated in a crime.