Tennessee Grandmother Jailed 168 Days After Facial Recognition Error as State Police Weigh Adopting the Same Technology
Angela Lipps spent nearly six months in jail after Clearview AI flagged her for bank fraud in a state she had never visited, even as Tennessee Highway Patrol considers a million-dollar contract with the same company.
Overview
A Tennessee grandmother spent 168 days in jail after police in Fargo, North Dakota, arrested her based on a facial recognition match generated by Clearview AI software — for bank fraud committed in a state she says she has never visited. Angela Lipps, 50, was freed on Christmas Eve 2025 after bank records proved she was in Tennessee during the crimes, but not before losing her home, her car, and her dog. The case has drawn national attention just as the Tennessee Highway Patrol is actively evaluating a contract with the same facial recognition provider, despite opposition from the state’s own attorney general. Clearview AI is among the facial recognition vendors that have secured contracts with federal immigration enforcement, as previously reported by The Machine Herald.
The Case
Between April and May 2025, someone used a fake U.S. Army military ID to withdraw thousands of dollars from banks in and around Fargo, North Dakota. West Fargo police ran imagery from the fake ID through Clearview AI’s facial recognition system, which flagged Lipps as a “potential suspect with similar features,” according to Reason. A Fargo detective then compared surveillance footage against Lipps’s social media and Tennessee driver’s license photo, deemed it a sufficient match, and obtained an arrest warrant.
On July 14, 2025, U.S. Marshals arrested Lipps at gunpoint at her home in Carter County, Tennessee, while she was babysitting four children. She was charged with four counts of unauthorized use of personal identifying information and four counts of theft. She was held without bail in a Tennessee county jail for 108 days before being extradited to North Dakota at the end of October.
Her attorney, Eric Rice, told CNN that exculpatory evidence was available from the start: “She did have exculpatory evidence available, such as records showing she was in Tennessee at the time.” Bank records showed Lipps purchasing cigarettes and depositing Social Security checks in Tennessee while she was allegedly committing fraud over 1,200 miles away. No phone call to verify her whereabouts was ever made. On December 19, Rice met with Fargo police and presented the bank records. Five days later, on Christmas Eve, charges were dismissed.
Investigation Failures
The case illustrates a pattern that has emerged in facial recognition-related arrests across the country: police treating AI-generated leads as definitive identifications rather than starting points for further investigation. Former Fargo Police Chief Dave Zibolski told InForum that his department “would not have allowed” the use of AI facial recognition and claimed Fargo detectives were unaware that West Fargo had conducted the search based on fake ID imagery rather than surveillance footage.
West Fargo Police Chief Pete Nielsen stated his department did not arrest based on the match because they “did not have enough evidence,” according to InForum. West Fargo already had a policy stating that “facial recognition search results shall be considered an investigative lead only and not a positive identification.” Fargo, by contrast, had no formal facial recognition policy before the Lipps case and has since adopted one.
Preservation letters have been served to eight agencies, including Fargo and West Fargo police departments, Cass County, the U.S. Marshals Service, and the North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigation. Attorneys Eric Rice and Dane DeKrey are investigating potential civil rights violations under 42 U.S.C. Section 1983 for wrongful arrest and false imprisonment. Fargo police have acknowledged “a few errors” but have not issued a direct apology.
A Broader Pattern
Lipps is one of at least a dozen Americans who have been wrongfully arrested after facial recognition software flagged them as suspects, according to Reason. Only 15 states had facial recognition legislation covering law enforcement as of early 2025, and North Dakota — where the charges against Lipps originated — has none. The case has prompted calls for statewide AI guidelines from North Dakota columnists and lawmakers, as InForum reported.
Tennessee Moves Toward Adoption
The timing of the Lipps case is notable given developments in her home state. On February 24, 2026, the Tennessee Highway Patrol held a demonstration with Clearview AI, the same company whose software generated the match that led to Lipps’s arrest. Officers were invited to submit photos in advance for the demo. A THP spokesperson told Louisville Public Media that the department received a quote for Clearview AI’s services totaling “just under” one million dollars, though “no action” had been taken as of March 25.
Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti has filed an amicus brief alongside 23 other states and the District of Columbia challenging Clearview AI’s practices, asserting that the company “collected billions of images without their consent for use in a searchable facial recognition database.” Nashville’s airport authority has already conducted more than 1,600 Clearview searches since early 2025, according to Louisville Public Media.
The ACLU’s Nate Freed Wessler warned that facial recognition systems amount to placing everyone with online photos “in a police lineup with every single search” and added that the technology “gets it wrong” and “makes false matches quite frequently.”
What We Don’t Know
Several questions remain unanswered. The actual perpetrator of the Fargo bank fraud has not been publicly identified. It is unclear whether Fargo police ran any additional checks — such as comparing tattoos or other distinguishing features — before seeking the arrest warrant. The North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigation uses AI tools but has refused public disclosure of its practices, citing trade secret protections under state law, as reported by InForum. North Dakota currently has no statewide legislation governing law enforcement use of facial recognition, and the state highway patrol has no AI policies in place.
Clearview AI is scheduled to exhibit at the Tennessee Association of Chiefs of Police expo from April 8 to 10, 2026, according to Louisville Public Media. Tennessee residents, unlike those in 13 other states, currently have no option to have their data deleted or corrected in Clearview’s database.