A Minnesota man was arrested Wednesday night in New York after impersonating an FBI agent in a bid to free Luigi Mangione from jail, according to a law enforcement source and a federal criminal complaint.

Mark Anderson, 36, of Mankato, arrived at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn at 6:50 p.m. He claimed he was an FBI agent and had paperwork “signed by a judge” that allowed him to free Mangione, the complaint says.

Mangione is accused of fatally shooting UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson on a Manhattan street in December 2024. Mangione, who has amassed a national following of supporters, is charged with murder and may face the death penalty.

Anderson showed prison officials his Minnesota driver’s license when asked for identification. He said he had weapons and started throwing papers around the room, the complaint says.

When Anderson was later searched, Bureau of Prisons agents found a pizza cutter and a “large barbeque-type fork,” the complaint said. Anderson had recently been working at a pizza shop in the Bronx, according to the law enforcement source.

According to court records across two states, Anderson has a history of drug offenses and mental health troubles.

In 2021, he was civilly committed for six months, according to court records in Houston County, Minn. Anderson had been diagnosed with a psychotic disorder, records said, which severely impaired his “judgment, behavior, and capacity to recognize reality or to reason or understand.”

A law enforcement source said Anderson had traveled to New York for a job opportunity that did not pan out.

He ended up working at a pizza shop in the Bronx, Louie & Ernie’s Pizza, for a little over a year, according to Cosimo Tiso, one of the shop’s owners. He said Anderson had not worked there since April 2025.

Starting at the beginning of 2025, Tiso said in a phone call, other employees of the pizzeria reported there was “something off” in Anderson’s behavior. By the end of his employment, “he just wasn’t the same person I had hired,” Tiso said.

Tiso declined to say anything else about Anderson, who filed a lawsuit against his former employers in September.

Anderson filed the handwritten complaint without an attorney, and listed a home address in the Bronx. It claims he was not paid for overtime work and was in a work-related car crash.

After an initial conference before a judge on Jan. 21, the lawsuit was stayed, according to court documents.

Just over a week later, according to the criminal complaint, Anderson was confronting the staff at the Metropolitan Detention Center, a pretrial facility that has held many high-profile defendants.

It previously housed Jeffrey Epstein and Sean “Diddy” Combs, and currently houses former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, in addition to Mangione.

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