Facial Recognition Error Jails Innocent Grandmother For Months (theguardian.com)
- Reference: 0180967084
- News link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/03/13/0513251/facial-recognition-error-jails-innocent-grandmother-for-months
- Source link: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/12/tennessee-grandmother-ai-fraud
> Angela Lipps, 50, spent nearly six months in jail after Fargo police [2]identified her as a suspect in an organized bank fraud case using facial recognition software , according to south-east North Dakota news outlet [3]InForum . Lipps told the outlet she had never been to North Dakota and did not commit the crimes. Lipps, a mother of three and grandmother of five, said she has lived most of her life in north-central Tennessee. She had never been on an airplane until authorities flew her to North Dakota last year to face charges.
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> In July, U.S. marshals arrested Lipps at her Tennessee home while she was babysitting four children. She said she was taken away at gunpoint and booked into a county jail as a fugitive from justice from North Dakota. "I've never been to North Dakota, I don't know anyone from North Dakota," Lipps [4]told WDAY News . She remained in a Tennessee jail for nearly four months without bail while awaiting extradition. She was charged with four counts of unauthorized use of personal identifying information and four counts of theft.
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> According to Fargo police records obtained by WDAY News, detectives investigating bank fraud cases in April and May 2025 reviewed surveillance video of a woman using a fake U.S. army military ID to withdraw tens of thousands of dollars. The officers allegedly used facial recognition software to identify the suspect as Lipps. A detective reportedly wrote in court documents that Lipps appeared to match the suspect based on facial features, body type and hairstyle. Lipps told WDAY News that no one from the Fargo police department contacted her before the arrest. Lipps is now back home but says the experience has had lasting consequences. While jailed and unable to pay bills, Lipps lost her home, her car and her dog, she said. She also told WDAY News no one from the Fargo police department had apologized.
[1] https://slashdot.org/~Mr.+Dollar+Ton
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/12/tennessee-grandmother-ai-fraud
[3] https://www.inforum.com/news/fargo/ai-error-jails-innocent-grandmother-for-months-in-fargo-case
[4] https://www.inforum.com/news/fargo/ai-error-jails-innocent-grandmother-for-months-in-fargo-case
I hope (Score:5, Insightful)
they sue the City of Fargo, the (now retired) police chief, the "investigating" officers, and the prosecutor. Extreme dereliction of responsibility. Even the most basic of investigation would have showed she was in Tennessee during the time the crimes occurred - she cashed a check, purchased several items, and had numerous witnesses who put her in Tennessee at the time the crimes occurred in North Dakota.
I won't say "defund the police" because we do need to police and people who enforce the law, but I will say fuck those guys for not doing their job even at the most basic level. I hope she gets payout in the seven figure range for this malpractice.
Re: (Score:3)
And then you find out that the wrong guy was tortured to death, and what do you then? Torture the one to death who made the mistake in identifying the one misidentifying Mrs. Lipps?
The problem with all those "setting an example" punishments is that they themselves can also be flawed, and instead of sending a warning, they send the message that the system can not be trusted. And then, nobody cares about justice at all, because it is arbitrary anyway.
Re: I hope (Score:1)
plebs are already executed regularly by overzealous law enforcement. i am not asking for much but "reciprocity". at least you didn't bring up the Constitution, that quaint little crumbling piece of bumwipe.
Re: (Score:2)
That's how they would have settled it in the old days.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Do we need police? This country didn't always have them, and they began life as an institution as slavecatchers.
I hope someday people aren't saying "well, I won't say 'defund TSA', because we need them."
Re:I hope (Score:4, Interesting)
If you get rid of the police, you need another means to keep up law and order. You can try neighborhood watch schemes, but they prove to be even more flawed in regularly catching the wrong person. And they don't have the tools and the education to actually investigate crimes, because during the day, they have another job and doing the neighborhood watch on their free time.
Re:I hope (Score:5, Informative)
We saw what happened to areas where the residents drove police out [1]like this [wikipedia.org]. Vandalism, looting, shootings, etc. Store shelves cleared out by criminals. It very quickly became unlivable until the police reclaimed it.
So, yes, we need police. And we need to hold the police accountable when they harm us.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Occupied_Protest
Re:I hope (Score:4, Informative)
We also saw when so many overzealous "law enforcement" people were sent to the likes of DC, Minneapolis, etc. They go in looking for trouble and if they don't find it, they agitate enough to "find" trouble. There is a delicate balance between the right amount and the right type of law enforcement. As with everyone else, they should not have any kind of blanket immunity, we have witnessed so many tragic outcomes due to this policy.
Re: (Score:2)
In 1790, the US population was 94.9% rural. There is no country. in the world today that rural -- Burundi, which looks like blanks spot in the world at night satellite picturs, is 88% rural.
The largest city at the time was New York, with a population of 33,000. Northern Manhattan was near-wilderness, mid-town was farms and country houses.
In 1790 the US was. country you could "police" with sheriffs and volunteer posses, largely to keep the peace. If you got robbed, you hired a private thief catcher. This
Re: (Score:2)
you do realize this is exactly how the system was made to work so the state isn't held accountable right? if there was real accountability taxpayers wouldn't need to pay for seven figure payouts while also paying the people that do the crimes to justify the seven figure payouts.
Re:I hope (Score:5, Insightful)
Welcome to qualified immunity. You can't do shit against the police even if they straight up murder you.
Re:I hope (Score:4, Informative)
"Defund the police" doesn't mean to shut down all policing. It means to redistribute some of the many duties we heap on the police to other, more qualified, groups. For example, police shouldn't be required to mediate a domestic dispute on their own. There should be someone available we the training to do that, perhaps accompanied by the police, but in any event capable on their own to handle it. In this case, police should be a second resort. "Defund the police" means let the police focus on law enforcement and fund accordingly.
Police ignore their own failures (Score:5, Insightful)
The N. Dakota D.A. refused to prosecute because the police case (a computer-generated guess) wasn't convincing. The article reveals the real horror: How the DoJ washed their hands of the abuse they committed, literally dumping her on the street of a different state. It reveals how little responsibility, police have towards the victims (Ie. Finding the fake Id. and the stolen property.) and the systemic cruelty in the US judicial system.
It also reveals the stupidity of automatically escalating a crime to a federal 'level' because the alleged criminal crossed a state border.
It's interesting that no-one is talking about prosecuting the police for very real suffering: One hopes she hires a skilled lawyer to seek damages.
Re:Police ignore their own failures (Score:4)
The underlying problem is that the laws protect the police so long as they *think* they are doing their duty. So it is almost impossible to bring a case against them.
Re:Police ignore their own failures (Score:4, Interesting)
The judge who issued the warrant is paid way more than those cops ... enough blame to go around, but the judge should get most of it.
Re: (Score:3)
THIS...very much THIS. As a former DSO, we were forced to do STUPID shit by some judge sitting on his bench with his head up his arse far too often. That doesn't excuse the lazy incompetence of the Fargo PD in this case.
Re: (Score:2)
In order to sue the government you have to ask for permission.... from the government.
And they never will (Score:1)
The Fargo police have not apologized and they never will.
Re: (Score:1)
That detective should just eat his own gun.
Abandoned by everyone (Score:2)
"a mother of three and grandmother of five" yet she missed payments. No-one could step in???
Re:Abandoned by everyone (Score:5, Informative)
She was poor , her family was also poor. Not everyone can afford to hire a lawyer , buy a plane ticket and visit Grandma in jail half the country away.
Re:Abandoned by everyone (Score:4, Insightful)
If you live paycheck to paycheck you can't suddenly start paying a second mortgage.
Re:Abandoned by everyone (Score:5, Informative)
It's entirely possible that they couldn't. Let me explain, as someone who has had to deal with the financial affairs of other family members multiple times.
First, not everyone keeps their financial affairs well-organized. For every person that has a neatly-labeled box of file folders, there's one who has thrown important papers into random boxes along with old newspapers, magazines, and junk mail. LOTS of random boxes. So merely trying to answer the question "What accounts does this person have?" takes a lot of work and a lot of time -- and even if that work's done carefully, it might still result in omissions.
Second, some people keep their financial affairs on a computer/online, which means that someone trying to help has to work through all that -- all the security, all the ID verification, all processes, all the bureaucracy, everything. This can be brutally difficult: it means hours and hours on hold with customer service departments that want to avoid doing anything resembling service. It means endless letter exchanges. It means retaining an attorney and getting documents notarized. It means sending things overnight recipient-signature required and then being told they never arrived. It means filling out forms and submitting them only to find out that they're the wrong forms -- even though they were the ones you were told to submit.
Third, it means dealing with people whose only goal is to get your problem off their desk and out of their queue -- so they'll close help desk tickets without bothering to ask if the problem is actually solved or even bothering to inform you. (When you call back, you'll be told that no such ticket exists. When you insist, they'll tell you that it was resolved and thus closed.) If you somehow manage to get past this, you'll be told things like "our anti-fraud procedures prevent you from paying your grandmother's electric bill" -- yes, really. Or -- and I'm not making this up -- "we need to talk to your mother directly". Oh? My mom? The one whose death certificate I sent you four months ago ? The one whose leftover $2.17 cable bill I'm trying to pay so that I can close the account and never have to speak to you again? That one?!
I could rant about this for pages, but the bottom line: trying to step in and handle someone's financial affairs is a full-time job. It requires constant attention, endless phone calls and letters, and a mountain of work.
Re: Abandoned by everyone (Score:1)
My favorite example is when the insurance company told me Iâ(TM)d need to submit a Power of Attorney form signed by the deceased person to allow me to cancel insurance on property that had been sold during probate.
Thankfully I knew enough to say âoethat is not how that works, what you want is the letters testamentaryâ, but this happened with at least one insurance company and one bank.
The real issue with AI (Score:5, Insightful)
This shows the real issue with AI. It isn't in the AI itself, but the people using it. I don't have an issue with them using AI to try and identify the suspect when they are having a hard time doing so. But you can't just take what AI says and assume it is correct and act on it. AI is a tool and needs to be used as such. When it gives you something, it is up to the people to actually check out what it says and follow up on it. People are using AI as if it is the answer but it is just a tool to try and get to the real answer and that is the part that people are ignoring.
Re: (Score:1)
You heard about this kind of stuff happening in the US before AI. You're a police state - the police act with impunity like this, destroying innocent people's lives and facing no consequences. You should remind all those legal gun owners of their responsibility to overthrow the tyrants.
Re: (Score:3)
It seems one of the problems is new technology is used without verification and validation. Instead of using technology to reduce workloads, it is used to replace workloads. In years past for example using a database to find potential suspects is now the database generates the arrest warrants with no verification/investigation in between.
Re: The real issue with AI (Score:2)
The problem is it's sold as infallible. Whether that's ignorance or marketing from the sellers I don't know but it's dangerous.
Even past crimminals should have rights (Score:5, Interesting)
While everyone is amazed how this fuck up could happen there is more to the story than sloppy police work. Grandma had a few priors on her record. I believe that is the reason this happened. A.I. match this person lets to a back ground check, oh look at that she has a few past convictions we got her. The judge probably spent 30 seconds on the arrest warrant and saw her prior convictions and signed off, I mean she has been arrested before so she must be guilty . Even criminals should have due process and this isn't it
AI is hardly the problem (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem was the police requestion and the judge issuing a fugitive warrant based on shit evidence. They should realise the impact and have some common sense. Even if she did it she wasn't a flight risk, this did not protect evidence. She wasn't going to flee to Mexico with this amount of money. If she was a mule, doing the detective work while she was free would have been better.
Lack of human intelligence as always the biggest problem.
Re:AI is hardly the problem (Score:4, Insightful)
You are right and I think the real issue is she had a few priors on her record . So everyone assumed she must have done it with the filmiest of evidence . Judge looked at her case, saw she had a few prior arrest and done.
A pity... (Score:4, Funny)
If the cops are going to hold people without charge for months for bullshit reasons and then act like there's nothing wrong with that could they, please, try to focus on the "If you've done nothing wrong you have nothing to worry about!" idiots? At least with those guys it would be educational outreach.
S O _ M A N Y _ W R O N G S (Score:3)
I don't know where to start:
trolling electronic DBs without suspicion? (Laws were written for individual search)
Interstate trolling DBs by non-TN acredited LEOs?
Issuing arrest warrents without any corroboarating evidence?
acting on a warrent without any checking?
Other?
Mistakes will happen, you are guaranteeing more if they are not effectively prevented and ultimately punished.
LEOs are all about seeing people punished for mistakes. They must accept same for their own.
Apology? (Score:1, Troll)
> She also told WDAY News no one from the Fargo police department had apologized
She expects an apology? She should be thankful they didn't shoot her in the face 3 times. I mean, that's how U.S. "law enforcement" operates, right?
SUE SUE SUE!! (Score:2)
Please someone tell me a good hearted lawyer has taken on her case?
Josef K says... (Score:3)
told ya so.