A Tennessee grandmother spent nearly six months behind bars in North Dakota, a state she had never even stepped foot in, after being wrongfully identified by AI facial recognition technology in a bank fraud investigation.
The Grand Forks Herald reports that Angela Lipps, a 50-year-old mother of three and grandmother of five from Tennessee, found herself trapped in a nightmare that began last July when U.S. Marshals arrested her at gunpoint while she was babysitting four young children. Fargo police had used facial recognition software to identify her as the primary suspect in an organized bank fraud case, despite the fact that she had never set foot in North Dakota.
The case began in April and May 2025 when Fargo Police Department detectives investigated several bank fraud incidents. Surveillance footage captured a woman using a fraudulent U.S. Army military identification card to withdraw tens of thousands of dollars from local banks. To identify the suspect, investigators employed facial recognition software, which incorrectly matched the woman in the videos to Lipps.
According to court documents obtained through an open records request, the detective assigned to the case reviewed Lipps’ social media accounts and Tennessee driver’s license photo after receiving the facial recognition match. In the charging document, the detective stated that Lipps appeared to be the suspect based on facial features, body type, hairstyle, and hair color. Notably, no one from the Fargo Police Department contacted Lipps to question her before filing charges.
Lipps was arrested on July 14 and booked into her county jail in Tennessee as a fugitive from justice. She faced four counts of unauthorized use of personal identifying information and four counts of theft in North Dakota. Held without bail due to her fugitive status, Lipps spent 108 days in the Tennessee jail before North Dakota officers transported her to Fargo on October 30.
“It was so scary, I can still see it in my head, over and over again,” Lipps said during an interview about her ordeal.
Throughout her detention, Lipps maintained her innocence, telling anyone who would listen that she had never been to North Dakota and knew no one from the state. Her claims were supported by the fact that she had never flown on an airplane in her entire life, and her travels had been limited to states neighboring Tennessee.
Jay Greenwood, the attorney representing Lipps in North Dakota, immediately requested her bank records upon taking the case. “If the only thing you have is facial recognition, I might want to dig a little deeper,” Greenwood said.
The bank records proved conclusive. They showed that Lipps was in Tennessee, more than 1,200 miles away, during the times police claimed she was committing fraud in Fargo. The records documented routine transactions including Social Security check deposits, cigarette purchases at gas stations, pizza purchases, and Uber Eats orders through a cash app.
Fargo police finally interviewed Lipps for the first time on December 19, meeting with her and Greenwood at the Cass County jail. By that point, she had already spent more than five months incarcerated. Five days later, on Christmas Eve, prosecutors dismissed the case and released Lipps from custody.
However, her ordeal was far from over. Released in clothing inadequate for North Dakota’s freezing temperatures, Lipps found herself stranded more than a thousand miles from home with no means to return. “I had my summer clothes on, no coat, it was so cold outside, snow on the ground, scared, I wanted out but I didn’t know what I was going to do, how I was going to get home,” Lipps recalled.
Fargo police did not provide any financial assistance for her return journey. Local defense attorneys stepped in to help, providing money for a hotel room and food on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. The day after Christmas, Adam Martin, founder of the Fargo-based F5 Project, an organization that provides services to individuals struggling with incarceration, mental health, and addiction, drove Lipps to Chicago so she could make her way back to Tennessee.
When asked about the case at his retirement news conference on March 11, Fargo Police Chief David Zibolski declined to answer questions. After a week of attempts to arrange an on-camera interview were rebuffed, a reporter asked, “Why did nobody from Fargo Police ever speak with Angela Lipps for the five months she was in jail?” Zibolski responded, “Thank you, Matt, for that question but we are not here to talk about that today.”
The consequences of her wrongful detention have been devastating for Lipps. Unable to pay her bills while incarcerated, she lost her home, her car, and even her dog. She reports that no one from the Fargo Police Department has apologized for the misidentification and subsequent months of wrongful imprisonment.
“I’m just glad it’s over. I’ll never go back to North Dakota,” Lipps said.
The Fargo Police Department stated that the bank fraud investigation remains active and no arrests have been made in the case.
Breitbart News social media director Wynton Hall has written his forthcoming book, book Code Red: The Left, the Right, China, and the Race to Control AI, to serve as the definitive guide on how the MAGA movement can create positions on AI that benefit humanity without handing control of our nation to the leftists of Silicon Valley or allowing the Chinese to take over the world. This is more important than ever, as the AI giants themselves struggle to create effective guardrails on AI usage.
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Read more at the Grand Forks Herald here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.
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