–A Mason City man has been convicted of cheating the federal government out of Paycheck Protection Program loans and recruiting others into the scheme while working at an Algona meatpacking plant in 2020.
According to the US Attorney for the Northern District of Iowa, 48-year-old Yovany Ciero of Mason City, and formerly of Cuba, Colombia, and Venezuela, was convicted of three counts of wire fraud, 23 counts of money laundering, one count of engaging in a monetary transaction in property derived from a specified unlawful activity, and one count of money laundering conspiracy. The verdict was returned following about three and a half hours of jury deliberations last week.
Ciero is a former Sergeant in the Cuban military who crossed the Mexican border nearly twenty years ago after his request for a visa to enter the United States was denied. In 2020, he was working at an Algona meat packing plant when the COVID-19 pandemic began.
Beginning in July 2020, Ciero, and over one hundred other immigrants from Cuba, obtained fraudulent Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans on the false and fraudulent pretenses that they were self-employed businesspeople who earned approximately $100,000 in gross income in 2019 when they actually worked at the meatpacking plant or elsewhere in 2019.
Ciero was one of six “bundlers” in the fraudulent PPP loan scheme, where he recruited individuals into the scheme, obtained their personal identifying information for the fraudulent loan applications, and then passed that information to others who submitted the fraudulent loan applications to lenders who were participating in the PPP. The evidence established that over $4 million in fraudulent PPP loan applications were submitted, and the government lost over $2.4 million as a result.
Once the individuals received their fraudulent PPP loan funds, typically $20,000 each, Ciero served as a “funnel” in a money laundering conspiracy. Ciero collected fees that the organizers of the scheme charged the applicants, typically $3,000 per $20,000 fraudulent loan.
Ciero also obtained two fraudulent PPP loans for himself, where he used most of this PPP loan money to purchase a semi-truck. Ciero is the sixth former Iowa meatpacking plant worker convicted in the PPP scheme.
