‘That wasn’t me’: How facial recognition led to a woman being jailed for 6 months HERMITAGE, Pa. - To investigators, the case against Kimberlee Williams appeared straightforward. “It’s very obvious it’s you,” an officer in Montgomery County, Maryland, said to Williams, who was handcuffed to a table in the police department. Williams had several prior convictions for writing bad checks in Oklahoma, and the person who appeared in surveillance photos, accused of making fraudulent withdrawals in Maryland, looked like a match in surveillance photos - the same build, the same age, the same shape face. But Williams was adamant. That wasn’t her. She lived in Oklahoma and had never been to Maryland, she said, until police arrested her and flew her in to be questioned. Williams, now 57, offered to take a polygraph test and said she had family members who could provide an alibi for her, according to video of the interview from July 2021 reviewed by The Washington Post. She acknowledged that she had a history of writing bad checks, but she insisted that was in the past. “I’m not trying to waste your time,” Williams said. “I’m telling you -” “You’re telling me, but you’re not telling me the truth,” the officer interrupted. Williams was charged in three Maryland counties - Montgomery, Prince George’s and Anne Arundel - and jailed for six months before the charges were dismissed, according to court records. She would not learn for years why she how she came to be accused: A bank investigator reported to Montgomery County police that facial recognition technology had identified Williams as the suspect in the Maryland fraud cases. Montgomery County police did not disclose that Williams had been identified using facial recognition when they sought charges against her, according to police records. Several criminal justice experts