An elderly woman from the USA was wrongfully incarcerated due to an error made by an artificial intelligence system, combined with the outrageous incompetence of a police department.
Angela Lipps, a 50-year-old woman, spent almost six months in jail after police officers in Fargo, North Dakota, using a facial recognition tool based on artificial intelligence, identified her as a suspect in a bank fraud case, according to a WDAY report cited by Futurism.
The woman, a mother of three children and grandmother of five grandchildren, says she has spent her entire life in the central-north part of Tennessee, about 1.6 kilometers away from where the crimes she was accused of allegedly took place. Last July, federal sheriffs appeared at her door while she was taking care of four children and arrested her at gunpoint.
Initially, Lipps was incarcerated in a Tennessee jail as a fugitive from justice in North Dakota. Being considered a fugitive, she was detained without bail and remained in jail for almost four months. Lipps was assigned a public defender for the extradition process and was told she would have to go to North Dakota to defend herself against the charges.
"I have never been to North Dakota, I don't know anyone from North Dakota," Lipps stated.
According to Fargo police department documents obtained by WDAY, the error stemmed from surveillance images that detectives analyzed while investigating bank fraud cases in April and May 2025. The images show a woman using a fake US Army military ID to withdraw tens of thousands of dollars.
Detectives turned to a facial recognition software based on artificial intelligence, which identified Lipps as the person in the video.
However, the lead provided by the AI was not properly verified by the police, who simply agreed that the facial features, body type, and hair of the suspect matched those of Lipps.
Lipps claims that no one from the Fargo police department ever called her to ask her anything.
Moreover, Fargo police did not even come to pick up Lipps from the Tennessee jail until 108 days after her arrest, after which she was flown to North Dakota to appear in court. The first time she was interviewed was in December, when she was already imprisoned in North Dakota, after spending over five months behind bars.
Lipps' lawyer presented bank statements showing that the woman was in Tennessee at the time investigators claim the bank fraud was committed. Lipps was released from jail on Christmas Eve.
Lipps says the police did not offer to at least pay for her trip back home, and with no money on her, she was left stranded in Fargo.
Local defense attorneys, impressed by her situation, raised money to pay for a hotel room for her, and a nonprofit organization called F5 Project arranged for her return to Tennessee.
"I had my summer clothes on, no thick coat, it was so cold outside, snow on the ground, I was scared. I wanted to leave, but I didn't know what I would do or how I would get home," Lipps said.
Lipps says she lost her home, car, and dog due to the time spent in jail, and the Fargo police department didn't even offer an apology.
C.S.