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Software flagged her face. She spent five months in jail. Now she's suing Fargo for $10M.

Jailed Five Months Over Crimes in a State She’d Never Visited, Grandmother Sues Fargo for $10M

by
M.A. Rothman

By M.A. RothmanSeptember 19, 2026 · 5 min read
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Angela Lipps, a 50-year-old Tennessee grandmother who spent more than five months behind bars for bank fraud committed in a state she had never visited, is suing the City of Fargo, North Dakota, and Fargo police Detective Lucas Heck for $10 million. Her federal complaint, filed September 15, 2026, in U.S. District Court in North Dakota, says she was charged on the strength of a facial recognition lead and little else, and that bank records readily available to investigators would have cleared her.

The charges were dismissed on December 23, 2025. She walked out of jail on Christmas Eve. By then, according to the complaint, she had lost her residence, her car and her other personal property.

A match from a fake ID

In April and May 2025, someone used stolen identities and fake identification to pull money from several banks in the Fargo area. According to the complaint and Fargo’s own account, a West Fargo police analyst ran the photo from the suspect’s fake ID through facial recognition software, and it flagged a social media photo of Lipps as a possible lead. Fargo police later said West Fargo was using Clearview AI.

The complaint says such results are meant to be treated only as investigative leads requiring independent corroboration, not as a positive identification, and that West Fargo police themselves did not consider the result strong enough on its own to bring charges. It also alleges the match came from the fake-ID photo, not the bank surveillance footage, and that Heck did not disclose that. According to the suit, the surveillance images show a person who differs from Lipps in facial features, build and tattoos.

North Dakota charged her with eight felonies on June 30, 2025, including felony theft and unauthorized use of personal identifying information. A judge signed a warrant with nationwide extradition on July 1.

Arrested at gunpoint while babysitting

On July 14, 2025, a U.S. Marshals fugitive task force arrested Lipps at gunpoint at a neighbor’s home in Tennessee, where she was babysitting. She spent more than three months in a Tennessee jail before being extradited and then held at the Cass County Jail in North Dakota on a $100,000 bond she could not pay. Reporting on the case notes that part of her Tennessee detention involved an unrelated probation matter, and Fargo police have said they could not determine whether that or her fighting extradition caused the delay.

She had never been to North Dakota. “It was the first time I had ever been on an airplane,” she said of her extradition flight. “I was terrified and exhausted and humiliated.”

The complaint describes what those months cost her: “She missed family birthdays. She spent her own birthday incarcerated, separated from her family. She missed holidays with her loved ones, including Thanksgiving and Christmas.” It adds: “While in custody, she was denied basic care, such as her medications and her dentures.”

What finally freed her was the kind of evidence any investigator could have requested in an afternoon. Her defense attorney obtained bank records placing her in Tennessee when the thefts happened. On December 23, according to Fargo police, the detective, the prosecutor and the judge agreed to dismiss the charges without prejudice. She was released on Christmas Eve, and according to the complaint, she walked out with four cents and no winter coat, in temperatures near 10 degrees.

“A couple of errors”

At a March 2026 press conference, then-Fargo Police Chief Dave Zibolski acknowledged that the department had “identified a couple of errors.” He said Fargo has no facial recognition system of its own, and that detectives “assumed wrongly” that West Fargo had also sent the surveillance photos along with the ID match. Fargo, he said, would stop using information from West Fargo’s system because “it’s their own system – we don’t know how it’s run or how it’s overseen.”

“No one wants to see someone detained, arrested unnecessarily,” Zibolski said. Asked whether the department would apologize, he answered: “At this juncture, we still don’t know who’s involved and who’s not involved.” No direct apology came. Fargo police said at the time that the case remained “open and active” and that charges “may be refiled.” Zibolski, who had announced his retirement earlier that month, left the department at the end of March.

Lipps’ attorneys were blunt then, saying an officer “used AI facial recognition as a shortcut for basic investigation,” and that “Officers knew that Angela was a Tennessee resident.”

The lawsuit

The suit brings five claims: unlawful seizure and arrest, due process violations, a civil rights claim against the city over its policies and training, false arrest and imprisonment, and malicious prosecution. It alleges that Fargo police had no policy, training or supervision governing facial recognition at the time, unlike West Fargo, which restricts the tool to trained officers and bars arrests based solely on a match. “They knew that AI facial recognition technology should not be used as the sole basis to extradite and charge a person,” the complaint says.

Heck is not accused of running the search himself; the complaint says he requested the warrant without enough independent investigation to establish probable cause. Lipps seeks $10 million plus punitive damages against Heck. The complaint says she still “lives in fear that she will be abducted again.”

Asked for comment, a city spokesperson said, “The City does not comment on pending litigation.” These are allegations in a civil complaint and have not been decided by a court.

This case should worry anyone who believes in due process, whatever they think of policing generally. A computer can suggest a face. Only a human being can sign a warrant, and the Fourth Amendment asks that human being to have probable cause, not a hunch from software and an assumption about what someone else checked.

A grandmother lost five months, her home and her car on a software lead that her own bank records could have disproved, and Fargo still hasn’t said it’s sorry.

Sources

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