After a facial recognition program mistakenly reported an American grandmother for bank f√aud in a state she had never been to, she was sentenced to five months in prison.
In July of last year, Tennessee resident Angela Lipps, 50, was initially taken into custody at her rental house. A GoFundMe campaign claims that at the end of October, she was extradited to Fargo, North Dakota, more than 1,000 miles from her home.
The West Fargo Police Department had used “facial recognition technology” that flagged Lipps as a potential suspect in a local f√aud case, Dave Zibolski, the Fargo Police Department’s chief, told CNN. From there, his department took “additional investigative steps independent of AI to assist in identification” and confirm Lipps as a suspect.
He admitted at a press conference on Tuesday that the West Fargo police’s system was “part of the issue” in Lipps’ wrongful arrest.
The West Fargo Police Department told CNN that they use Clearview AI, which “identified a potential suspect with similar features to Angela Lipps.”
Lipps was also detained in Tennessee for three months because the Cass County Sheriff’s Office apparently neglected to tell North Dakota authorities that they had her extradition waiver, the outlet reported.
Lipps said that her relocation to North Dakota was “the first time I had ever been on an airplane.” She added it was the first, and last, time she will ever step foot in the Peace Garden State.
By that point, Lipps was “terrified and exhausted and humiliated,” she wrote on the GoFundMe, but the end still wasn’t in sight.
Once the grandmother finally touched down in Fargo, she was provided with a lawyer, who obtained bank records proving that she had been in Tennessee during the time of the fraud the department linked her to.
“It took five minutes for the whole thing to fall apart. Five minutes,” Lipps wrote on the fundraiser.