Angela Lipps has filed a federal lawsuit against the City of Fargo and a former police detective, seeking $10 million over an arrest she alleges resulted from a facial recognition lead that investigators failed to corroborate.
The suit names former Fargo Police Department Detective Lucas Heck and was filed in U.S. District Court in North Dakota. It concerns bank fraud charges brought against Lipps, a Tennessee resident, in 2025 and dismissed after her attorney obtained records placing her in Tennessee when the thefts occurred.
The complaint alleges that a West Fargo police analyst and North Dakota’s state intelligence center supplied a possible facial recognition match during an investigation into thefts at Fargo-area banks. The suspect had allegedly used stolen identities and false identification to obtain funds.
Lipps alleges that the facial recognition search used a photograph from the suspect’s fake identity document, rather than surveillance footage. The complaint says Heck did not disclose that distinction and treated the result as identification without the independent investigation required to corroborate a possible lead.
The lawsuit also alleges that Lipps did not match the suspect’s physical description and had no unexplained funds linking her to the thefts. It says West Fargo police did not consider the facial recognition result sufficient on its own to support charges.
North Dakota charged Lipps with eight felonies in June 2025. She was arrested in Tennessee the following month, extradited to North Dakota and held at the Cass County Jail on a $100,000 bond she could not pay. Prosecutors dismissed the charges on December 24.
The complaint alleges that Fargo lacked adequate policies, training and supervision for facial recognition at the time. Then-police chief Dave Zibolski acknowledged investigative errors at a March 2026 press conference and said new policies and training had been introduced.
Separate wrongful-arrest cases have challenged police reliance on face matches. Bloomington settled Kylese Perryman’s lawsuit after an incorrect identification, while Amazon Web Services was added to a St. Louis arrest suit.
Lipps’ claims include unlawful seizure and arrest, due process violations, municipal civil rights liability, false imprisonment and malicious prosecution. In addition to $10 million in damages, she seeks punitive damages against Heck, attorneys’ fees and a jury trial.
Sources: WZFG
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By the ID Tech Editorial Team
