Details about where and when the tapes were recovered were not immediately available. Salt Lake County sheriff's Lt. Paul Jaroscak deferred questions until a 1 p.m. press conference scheduled for Wednesday to discuss the issue.
He said no arrests have been made in connection with the theft, but confirmed to The Salt Lake Tribune that missing tapes - which put an estimated 1.5 million patients of University of Utah hospitals and clinics at risk for identity theft - were recently found.
Jaroscak wouldn't comment about whether any of the information had been accessed by the thieves. He said called the investigation into the theft "deep" and said it is ongoing.
Several attempts to reach University officials for comment on the recovery of the tapes were unsuccessful Tuesday evening.
The University of Utah last month announced the theft of backup tapes filled with private patient information such as driver license numbers, birth dates, physicians' names, insurance providers and medical procedure codes from patients over the past 16 years. Social Security numbers were listed in the records for an estimated 953,000 patients.
University officials said a Perpetual Storage courier picked up tapes containing the records from the hospital, but did not immediately transport them to the company's storage vault in Little Cottonwood Canyon.
Instead, the courier violated company policy by leaving the records in his personal vehicle overnight outside his home in Kearns. In the early hours of June 2, a thief broke into the vehicle and stole a metal box containing the tapes.
A $1,000 reward was offered for returning the tapes. The university has spent about $500,000 to mail letters out to the millions of patients affected, a hospital spokesman said last month.
The university initially estimated the number of patients affected by the billing records theft at 2.2 million, but then lowered it to 1.5 million after eliminating patients who had died or were listed in the system multiple times, a hospital spokesman said.
The billing records fiasco elicited outrage from patients fearful their personal information would be poached by identity thieves.
A class-action lawsuit spearheaded by former patient Patrick M. Beamish was filed June 11 in 3rd District Court. Beamish claims Perpetual Storage negligently allowed the records to be stolen, exposing him to the risk of identity theft.
In addition, a lawsuit filed by former patient Thelma Keachie on Monday alleges Perpetual Storage let its business license lapse and should not have been operating in the state in the first place. License details on the Web site of the Utah Department of Commerce lists a delinquency date of May 23, a week before the tapes were stolen. Keachie is seeking class-action status in her lawsuit.
