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Fargo Police Abandon Facial Recognition After Woman Wrongly Jailed for Five Months

Fargo police now say excessive trust in face-matching software led to the error.

Overview

  • Fargo police said in March 2026 they will stop using facial recognition after the case exposed serious mistakes.
  • Investigators had arrested Angela Lipps in July 2025 based on a Clearview AI match linking her to a Fargo bank fraud even though she had never been to North Dakota.
  • Prosecutors dismissed the fraud counts on December 23rd, 2025 after her bank records placed her in Tennessee, and she walked free on December 24th.
  • A breakdown in communication kept North Dakota from seeing that Tennessee had pulled back an extradition request, which kept her jailed for months.
  • Lipps says she lost her home, car and even her dog during confinement and is raising money to rebuild through a GoFundMe page.