(Valley News Live) – A Tennessee woman is suing the City of Fargo and a Fargo police detective for $10 million, alleging he relied on a flawed facial recognition match and ignored exculpatory evidence to bring bank fraud charges against her that were later dismissed.
Angela Lipps, of Elizabethton, Tennessee, filed the federal lawsuit Tuesday in U.S. District Court in North Dakota against the City of Fargo and Fargo Police Department Detective Lucas Heck. As Valley News Live first reported in March, Lipps was arrested in July 2025 after facial recognition software used by West Fargo police and a North Dakota intelligence center flagged her as a possible match to a suspect in a series of bank fraud incidents in the Fargo area.
According to the lawsuit, a woman used stolen identities and false identification to fraudulently obtain money from several Fargo-area banks in April and May 2025. Fargo police investigated the thefts, and Heck received facial recognition results from a West Fargo police analyst and North Dakota’s state intelligence center suggesting Lipps was a possible lead.
The lawsuit alleges Heck moved forward with charges despite knowing Lipps lived in Tennessee, had never been to North Dakota, didn’t match the physical description of the suspect on surveillance video, and had no unexplained funds connecting her to the thefts. The complaint says Heck failed to disclose that the facial recognition result was actually based on a photo from the suspect’s fake ID, not the surveillance footage, and that facial recognition results are meant to be treated only as investigative leads requiring independent corroboration, not positive identification. The lawsuit says West Fargo police did not believe the facial recognition results were strong enough on their own to bring charges.
On June 30, 2025, North Dakota charged Lipps with eight felonies related to the bank fraud, the most serious carrying up to 10 years in prison, according to the complaint. A nationwide warrant was issued for her arrest.
According to the lawsuit, Lipps was arrested at gunpoint at a neighbor’s home in Tennessee on July 14, 2025, by a U.S. Marshals fugitive task force while she was babysitting the neighbor’s children. She was held in a Tennessee jail, then extradited to North Dakota and detained at the Cass County Jail on a $100,000 bond she could not pay. The lawsuit says she remained in custody through Thanksgiving and her 50th birthday, and that jail staff denied her access to her dentures and medication for extended periods.
Prosecutors dismissed the charges on Dec. 24, 2025, after Lipps’ attorney produced bank records showing she was in Tennessee at the time of the thefts. The lawsuit says she was released from custody that night with four cents and no winter coat, in temperatures near 10 degrees, and relied on a local nonprofit and a neighbor to get home to Tennessee.
The suit accuses the Fargo Police Department of having no policy, training, or supervision governing officers’ use of facial recognition technology at the time, unlike the West Fargo Police Department, which restricts the tool to specially trained officers and prohibits arrests based solely on a facial recognition match.
Following public scrutiny after Valley News Live’s initial report, then-Fargo Police Chief Dave Zibolski said in a March 2026 press conference that the department made “investigative errors” and had since implemented new facial recognition policies and training.
The lawsuit brings five claims, including 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. Lipps is seeking $10 million in damages, along with punitive damages against Heck and attorneys’ fees, and has requested a jury trial.
These are allegations contained in a civil complaint. No response has been filed as of this writing.
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