Convicted robber ordered back to federal custody

Mark Huellen, a criminal who posed as a surgeon complete with stethoscope, was sent back to U.S. custody Friday for violating federal probation on a bank robbery conviction.

U.S. District Judge Joy Flowers Conti sentenced Huellen, 41, to 10 months at a halfway house and a federal marshal took him away.

The judge told him she hopes he can get the treatment he needs while in custody so he doesn’t end up in federal or state court again.

In September, sheriff’s deputies pulled him over on the South Side for speeding near Station Square. He told them that he was a trauma surgeon at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC and that he was on his way to perform a surgery. In addition to a stethoscope, he had a fake trauma surgeon ID with his name on it.

Deputies called Children’s Hospital, found out there were no surgeons there under that name and took him to jail.

He had been wanted since late June for violating conditions of his probation from a 2010 bank robbery conviction in U.S. District Court. The FBI said he held up a Dormont bank in 2008.

He had been arrested in 2016 after police said they found $20,000 worth of methamphetamine and a loaded gun at a house in Scott where he was staying after he had called 911 to report that six people were burglarizing the residence.

Police, who at the time said they suspected Huellen was hallucinating, arrested him and two other men they found smoking marijuana in an upstairs bedroom.