Shopper escorted from Sports Direct after being WRONGLY accused of fraud by AI

Daily Mirror

5 hours ago

Hospital worker Craig Hadley was left feeling humiliated after he was escorted from a Sports Direct store in Rotherham because staff using AI had wrongly identified him
A man who was wrongly accused of fraud after AI facial recognition software flagged his image.
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Craig Hadley says he will "never step foot" in a Sports Direct store again. The 46-year-old says he felt 'angry' and 'humiliated' after an error left him accused of criminal behaviour.
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A staff member at the Parkgate Shopping Centre in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, had used CCTV footage of Craig after mistaking the innocent shopper for another "bald-headed, bearded" customer who was in the store at the same time.
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Sports Direct apologised for the incident, saying it was "genuine mistake", and added that a formal investigation and further staff training would be undertaken.
Mr Hadley told the BBC: "At first, I thought it was a joke, but then it became clear it was quite serious, and they escorted me out of the shop." Craig waited an hour to speak to the manager to sort the case of mistaken identity out.
'The manager came down, having already reviewed the CCTV, which I was going to ask them to do and said they'd made a mistake,' he told BBC Radio Sheffield.
He was told he'd 'looked similar' to the customer accused of fraud so his picture had been wrongly 'flagged'.
'(The manager) said it was difficult because we looked the same and the only reason they could tell the difference from the CCTV was because I was wearing jeans and they were wearing shorts."
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Mr Hadley agreed the fraudster, who had been at the till at the same time he had been paying, "looked very similar" to him.
But he added: "'I get it was a human error and people make mistakes but where those mistakes can result in people who have done nothing wrong being put on a national database there needs to be more checks and balances.'
He said he had been "really anxious" in the weeks it took to resolve the issue. "There was a fear of my photo being in other shops where they might throw me out," he added. "It caused embarrassment, it could cause reputational damage."
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The software company, Facewatch, deleted Mr Hadley's image from its database after he had proven his identity to the company and the CCTV had been checked manually.
Madeleine Stone, from the civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch, told the BBC using software like Facewatch to deal with shoplifting was a "recipe for disaster".
"You could be blacklisted from your local shops, placed on a secret watchlist, and that information is shared in all the shops in your area," she said.
"There is not necessarily any evidence of wrongdoing and there is no due process.
"Many people have been really impacted by this."
A Facewatch representative told Mr Hadley that avoiding wrongly including individuals on its database was "of the highest importance" to the company.