A man was arrested Wednesday night after authorities said he showed up at a federal detention center in Brooklyn claiming to be an FBI agent with a court order to release Luigi Mangione.
Mark Anderson, 36, of Mankato, Minnesota, approached the intake area of the Metropolitan Detention Center near 7:00 p.m. on January 29 and told Bureau of Prisons officers that “he was an FBI agent in possession of paperwork ‘signed by a judge’ authorizing the release of a specific inmate who was in custody at the MDC,” according to authorities.
Law enforcement said the inmate Anderson sought to free was Mangione, the 27-year-old man accused of murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on a Manhattan street in December 2024.
When officers asked Anderson for proof of his identity, prosecutors said he showed them a Minnesota driver’s license. Anderson “also displayed and threw at the BOP officers numerous documents,” the complaint states. Anderson then “claimed to be in possession of weapons.”
Officers searched a backpack Anderson had with him and found “a large barbeque type fork and a round steel blade,” the filing said — a pizza cutter. Anderson was immediately arrested and charged with impersonating a federal agent.
CBS News reported that Anderson told officers he wanted to be arrested and claimed that the Mexican drug cartel was after him. He had traveled to New York from Minnesota for a job opportunity that did not work out and has been working in a pizzeria.
Anderson appeared Thursday afternoon in Brooklyn federal court before Judge Taryn Merkl, who ordered him detained after ruling he posed a flight risk and danger to the community. Anderson has multiple open criminal cases in New York, including one in which he is accused of showing a gun. He was not required to enter a plea at the hearing.
He is now being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center, the same facility where Mangione is incarcerated. There is no indication that Mangione was aware of Anderson’s attempt to free him.
According to public records, Anderson has had numerous drug and alcohol-related arrests and convictions over the past two decades in his native Minnesota and in Wisconsin, where he has also previously lived.