Cuban man held without bail in theft of UPMC employees' identities, tax return scheme

A federal judge Friday ordered a Cuban man held without bail pending trial on charges of stealing the identities of UPMC employees as part of a tax return fraud scheme.

A federal grand jury in Pittsburgh indicted Yoandy Perez Llanes in June on 21 counts of conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy, wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. He was arrested in Venezuela and extradited Thursday to the United States.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert Mitchell scheduled Llanes' formal arraignment for Thursday.

Llanes and others stole the identities of UPMC employees and filed false tax returns to get refunds from the Treasury Department, prosecutors say.

A UPMC database was hacked in January and February of 2014. By March of that year, the conspirators had filed at least 935 fraudulent tax returns. They used proxy computers to make it look like the returns were being filed from the Pittsburgh area.

Llanes and the others allegedly sought a total of about $2.2 million in refunds. They received at least $1.5 million and converted at least $886,000 into Amazon gift cards, which they used to buy merchandise that was shipped to Miami and then repacked and shipped to Venezuela.

Brian Bowling is a Tribune-Review staff writer.