A student wants a billion dollars after Apple. The company wrongly labeled him as a thief and had him arrested

Eighteen-year-old American Ousmane Bah has decided to sue Apple and demand compensation of one billion dollars. All this for being wrongly labeled as a criminal and having photos of him with his name appear in the media in connection with massive thefts at brick-and-mortar Apple stores

In the fall of last year, there were several major thefts at Apple Stores on the US East Coast. Several of them also took place in Boston, and several suspects were arrested shortly after. One of them was the aforementioned eighteen-year-old Ousmane Bah, who, however, is allegedly innocent in everything and now intends to claim compensation in court.

Bah blames Apple for being incorrectly identified based on special software that is responsible for recognizing the faces of visitors to the Apple Store. The arrest warrant was reportedly issued based on a photo provided by Apple in which Bah does not appear at all. Moreover, at the time of the thefts, he was located somewhere else entirely, in the neighboring state of New York. Suspicion fell on him because his official identification document was found at the crime scene. However, Bah had lost it a few days before.

It is therefore possible that the lost document served as a "cover" for the thieves. This cover then led the investigators directly to the victim, who was detained despite the fact that he does not resemble the likeness of Apple's identification software at all. The amount Bah will be sued for is extremely high. Most likely, it is done so on purpose, as the injured party expects that he will not receive the required amount. He probably hopes that some form of agreement will be reached and that he will be able to extract at least some compensation from Apple for the problems that have arisen. This would not be unusual in the US.

For others, what's probably most interesting about the whole affair is that Apple has facial recognition and identification software that works in its brick-and-mortar stores.

Source: Macrumors