A Tennessee grandmother spent more than five months behind bars after a facial recognition system incorrectly identified her as a suspect in a North Dakota bank fraud case — a case she had no involvement in and no connection to.
Angela Lipps, 50, of Elizabethton, Tennessee, was taken into custody at her rental home by U.S. Marshals on July 14, 2025.
The arrest took place while Lipps was babysitting four young children, who witnessed the armed apprehension firsthand.
Lipps stated on a GoFundMe page created on her behalf: “They arrested me at gunpoint and took me away. Until then I had never had a gun pointed at me.”
The West Fargo Police Department had used Clearview AI, a commercial facial recognition tool, which flagged Lipps as a person with “similar features” to the actual suspect in the fraud case.
West Fargo Police Chief Dave Zibolski initially stated that the department had employed “additional investigative steps independent of AI to assist in identification.”
Zibolski later acknowledged at a press conference that the facial recognition system was “part of the issue” in the wrongful arrest.
Lipps was not transported to North Dakota until three months after her initial arrest in Tennessee.
According to Lipps, no one contacted her before the arrest or asked her any questions — law enforcement simply obtained a warrant and jailed her.
Upon finally arriving in Fargo, Lipps retained legal counsel, who obtained bank records confirming she had been in Tennessee at the time the alleged fraud was committed.
Lipps wrote in her GoFundMe: “It took five minutes for the whole thing to fall apart. Five minutes.”
CNN reported that charges against Lipps were dismissed on December 23, more than five months after her initial arrest, after the North Dakota attorney and a judge mutually agreed to allow further investigation. She was released on Christmas Eve.
In the wake of her release, Lipps found her rental home gone and her belongings seized after storage bills went unpaid during her incarceration.
Lipps stated that no one from the Fargo Police Department has apologized to her, and added that U.S. Marshals refused to allow her to bring her dentures to jail, leaving her without them for approximately six months.
