AI error jails innocent grandmother for months in North Dakota fraud case [View all]

Source: Grand Forks Herald

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Officers from North Dakota did not pick up Lipps from her jail cell in Tennessee until Oct. 30 — 108 days after her arrest. The next day she made her first appearance in a North Dakota courtroom to fight the charges.

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Greenwood immediately asked Lipps for her bank records. Once they were in hand, Fargo police met with him and Lipps at the Cass County jail on Dec. 19. She had already been in jail for more than five months. It was the first time police interviewed her.

Her bank records showed she was more than 1,200 miles away, at home in Tennessee at the same time police claimed she was in Fargo committing fraud.

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On Christmas Eve, five days after the interview with Fargo police, the case was dismissed, and she was released from jail.

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Read more: https://www.grandforksherald.com/news/north-dakota/ai-error-jails-innocent-grandmother-for-months-in-north-dakota-fraud-case

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They kept this woman in jail for more than 5 months, based on Fargo police using faulty AI to charge her with bank fraud in a state she'd never been in.

She lost her home, her car and her dog.

They released her from jail on Christmas Eve with no money, no way to get back to Tennessee, only the summer clothing she was wearing when arrested. Defense attorneys gave her money for a hotel room and food.

IMO Fargo owes her millions, and at least some people in the Fargo police department should be fired, investigated (including the police chief responsible, who will be retiring in a couple of weeks) and maybe prosecuted. They did not try to question her while she was in Tennessee, and did not pick her up from the TN jail where she was being held for months. I wonder if they knew they had no real case against her and were hoping some proof would show up.

It was sadistic of them to release her when they did, the way they did. They've never apologized to her.

I hope national media will put them under a spotlight.

AI facial recognition isn't reliable, but that initial mistake, bad as it was, was followed by incompetence and contempt for her rights.

In Tennessee, too, since no one there even asked about this woman's bank records, which would have cleared her immediately.