Source-linked public-record research into lawsuits, outcomes, related proceedings, court rulings, public statements and litigation chronology.
2025-07728 · Lackawanna County
Evidentiary treatment: This summarizes the plaintiff's own allegations as stated in the complaint or docket record cited below. It reflects what was filed, not a court finding, and is not a determination that the allegations are true.
Fidelity Deposit & Discount Bank sued to foreclose a commercial mortgage on the business premises at 25 Dundaff Street, Carbondale. The bank pleads that on 29 December 2022 FRM LLC, together with Frank Tufano and Free Range Meat LLC as co-borrowers, executed a $246,000 promissory note, secured by a first mortgage from FRM LLC as mortgagor recorded the next day at Instrument Number 202225275; that the borrowers refused to pay the balance due; and that $12,934.80 remained owing as of 2 September 2025 - $10,976.99 of it principal, the rest late charges, fees, a UCC termination fee and an escrow balance - with interest running at $2.52 a day. The complaint states expressly that it is 'an in rem action only against the aforementioned Mortgaged Premises' and that the mortgage has not been assigned, and asks for judgment plus foreclosure and judicial sale of the property. The gap between the $246,000 note and the roughly $11,000 outstanding is explained by the payoff Tufano describes in C009: he says he sent the bank $230,000 in February 2025 to close the loan.
This page separates court/ruling records, party filings, research classifications, secondary sources and public statements. Unknown or unresolved fields remain labelled as such.
Outcome reason: Fidelity Deposit & Discount Bank filed a Complaint in Mortgage Foreclosure (Commercial) against FRM LLC on 2025-09-22, seeking $12,934.80 and judicial sale of 25 Dundaff Street, Carbondale. The Clerk of Judicial Records entered judgment for that amount on 2025-10-31 on the bank's praecipe - no judge was ever assigned to the case - and a Praecipe for Writ of Execution for $20,651.00 followed on 2025-12-01, together with an affidavit under Pa.R.C.P. 3129.1 beginning the sheriff's-sale process. Tufano, appearing pro se for the company, filed a Motion to Consolidate (2025-09-29) and a Motion to Vacate Default Judgment (docketed 2026-01-08); the docket shows no ruling on either. On 2026-02-06 the bank's counsel (Cipriani & Werner) filed a Praecipe for Discontinuance with Prejudice - the same day the same firm discontinued the companion confession-of-judgment action C022. The portal's case-detail record still shows no coded disposition date.
Research status: Source-backed (direct LPA portal docket, case detail and five documents read)
Research notes: Found on 2026-08-30 by searching the Lackawanna General Index for the litigant FRM LLC rather than for Frank Tufano - the entity-name search the county's own instruction page recommends and that this project had never run. The case had never been tracked. It identifies the previously unnamed 'related foreclosure/sheriff's-sale proceeding' already recorded on C009. This is a matter brought against Tufano's company, not one he commenced.
Sequence does not by itself prove motive or causation.
FRM LLC, with Frank Tufano and Free Range Meat LLC as co-borrowers, executed a $246,000 commercial promissory note payable to Fidelity Deposit & Discount Bank, secured by a first mortgage from FRM LLC on 25-31 Dundaff Street, Carbondale, recorded the following day at Instrument Number 202225275.
Source — ic-access.com ↗FRM LLC filed two Stipulations Against Liens with the Lackawanna Prothonotary the day the mortgage was recorded - 2022-30178 with Wallis Electric Construction Co. and 2022-30179 with Crispino's Refrigeration & Air Conditioning, Inc. - both covering 25-31 Dundaff Street and both signed 'Owner: FRM, LLC - By: Frank Tufano, Sole Member'.
Source — ic-access.com ↗FRM LLC filed a Stipulation Against Liens with the Lackawanna Prothonotary (2022-30179) recording its contract with Crispino's Refrigeration & Air Conditioning, Inc. of Dalton, Pennsylvania for 'Refrigeration/Freezer related repairs for equipment located in a Commercial Building' at 25-31 Dundaff Street, Carbondale. It is signed 'Owner: FRM, LLC - By: Frank Tufano, Sole Member'.
Source — ic-access.com ↗Fidelity Deposit & Discount Bank filed C103, a commercial mortgage foreclosure against FRM LLC, seeking $12,934.80 and judicial sale of the business premises.
Source — ic-access.com ↗Two days later the same bank filed C022, a Complaint in Confession of Judgment against Free Range Meat LLC, FRM LLC and Frank Tufano individually, with $14,228.28 entered against all three on filing.
Source — ic-access.com ↗Tufano, pro se, moved to consolidate the foreclosure with his own earlier suit C009, arguing FRM LLC is only a holding company with no cause of action against it and calling the foreclosure a 'frivolous and vexatious lawsuit' brought to 'drain his already abysmal financial resources'.
Source — ic-access.com ↗The Clerk of Judicial Records entered judgment in mortgage foreclosure for $12,934.80 against FRM LLC on the bank's praecipe.
Source — ic-access.com ↗The bank filed a Praecipe for Writ of Execution for $20,651.00 together with an affidavit under Pa.R.C.P. 3129.1, beginning the sheriff's-sale process against the property.
Source — ic-access.com ↗Tufano filed a Motion to Stay Sheriff's Sale and Rule to Show Cause in C009. The sale being stayed is the one begun in C103 on 2025-12-01 - a link the tracker had recorded as an unidentified 'related foreclosure/sheriff's-sale proceeding' until this pass.
Source — ic-access.com ↗Four days later the bank's counsel, Cipriani & Werner, filed Praecipes for Discontinuance with Prejudice in both C103 and C022 - the same day, by the same firm, with consecutive document keys on the Prothonotary's document server.
Source — ic-access.com ↗Indexed DocketBird material is classified by record type and verification status. Party filings, tentative rulings and unresolved sanctions leads are not treated as court findings.
Filed pro se by Frank Tufano for the defendant company. He asserts that 'Plaintiff has incorrectly named an entity that should not be involved in legal action', that all of his businesses 'have operated under sole proprietorship' while FRM LLC is only 'a holding company', and that the bank should have counterclaimed in his own earlier suit (CV2025-03929, tracked as C009) 'instead of filing another separate action against Frank Tufano, presumably to drain his already abysmal financial resources'. He further alleges the bank 'stole $230,000 and applied it to the mortgage payment without Frank Tufano's permission' and calls the foreclosure a 'frivolous and vexatious lawsuit'. Exhibit A to the motion is his own verified complaint in C009.
Evidentiary treatment: Party filing and party allegation only - these are Tufano's own characterisations of an opponent's suit, not findings of any court. No ruling on this motion appears on the docket.
Verification: Source-backed (document read in full)
DocketBird — ic-access.com ↗Judgment entered for Fidelity Deposit & Discount Bank against FRM LLC for $12,934.80 plus per-diem interest of $2.52 from 3 September 2025, late charges, costs and attorney's fees, and for foreclosure and judicial sale of 25 Dundaff Street.
Evidentiary treatment: Signed by the Clerk of Judicial Records, Lauren M. Mailen - not by a judge. No judge was ever assigned to this case. This is an administrative default judgment entered on the plaintiff's praecipe and is therefore not recorded as a court finding.
Verification: Source-backed (document read)
DocketBird — ic-access.com ↗Filed pro se by Frank Tufano, dated 4 November 2025. He argues the named LLC 'has no subject matter jurisdiction as it is a holding company and not the individual that has made the mortgage payments', that the bank's attorney 'misrepresented the facts as defendant parties in this matter did respond to the initial complaint', and asks that the motion to consolidate be ruled on first.
Evidentiary treatment: Party motion only. The docket records no ruling on it.
Verification: Source-backed (document read in full)
DocketBird — ic-access.com ↗Public statements are displayed separately from court findings. Quotations are transcribed from the video’s own YouTube auto-generated captions and timestamped from the caption cues covering the passage quoted. The Strong / Moderate / Context tier is this project’s research classification of how closely a statement bears on the documented filing patterns — it is not a judicial finding. Any second badge names the filing-restriction factor the statement’s own words describe; it records what the speaker said, not that a court found it.
How quotations are marked: An ellipsis (…) inside a quotation marks words left out between two passages of the same video, which can sit some minutes apart. The omitted wording is not reproduced here, and a clip on the statement supercut plays the whole span from the quotation’s first word to its last — so it includes the omitted material. Quotations without an ellipsis are continuous speech.
We're here in the freezer down at Frankie's Herage Me. And this is the reason I left New York and got this building because to put a freezer up that is this size, 24x 24x 40 ft, which cost a fortune, probably over a million dollars, and this whole building, it was basically a few hundred,000 that I got a loan on. So, it was really the only option, and it was still within a few hours of the city.
Two distinct pieces of background that this research does not otherwise carry in the speaker's own words. First, the loan on the business premises. He states the building was acquired with a loan of "a few hundred thousand". The Fidelity Bank mortgage dispute is precisely a fight over a commercial mortgage on the business premises: C009 (Tufano v. Fidelity Bank, Lackawanna 2025-03929, filed 2025-05-27, discontinued with prejudice 2026-02-02), C103 (Fidelity Bank v. FRM LLC, Lackawanna 2025-07728, filed 2025-09-22 — the mortgage foreclosure on 25 Dundaff Street, in which a writ of execution and a Pa.R.C.P. 3129.1 affidavit issued 2025-12-01) and C022 (Fidelity Bank v. Free Range Meat LLC, 2025-07808, confession of judgment). This video is published between the first and the second of those, and it is a first-person description of the financed asset at the centre of them. Second, the relocation. "This is the reason I left New York… it was still within a few hours of the city" is a plain statement that the move out of New York was driven by the cost of the cold-storage facility — an ordinary commercial reason. That matters because the New York-to-Pennsylvania move sits behind the venue of most tracked filings, and behind the New York arbitration and state matters in the Starowicz-related litigation; his own stated reason for the move is worth recording rather than leaving the question open. It describes no filing conduct — no suit, no count, no ruling, no court. Tier: Moderate (No filing-conduct factor).
Watch / source — youtube.com ↗I just got a notice from the sheriff that they're trying to sell my property for closure in March, which is completely insane. So, I paid off most of the mortgage payment last year and we had a dispute with the company.
Reports receipt of a sheriff's sale notice with a March sale date and traces it back to a disputed mortgage payoff. Consistent with the tracked foreclosure chronology, in which the writ of execution and sale affidavit were filed on 2025-12-01. No bank, case number or court is named in the video.
Why this classification: Reports a docket event that happened to him rather than conduct of his own, and the counterparty is identified only as the company, so the link runs through the described facts.
Watch / source — youtube.com ↗The action still in court. So, I don't know how they were able to get this issued. I think they filed a separate lawsuit against the LLC, which isn't valid. It's just a holding company. And now I got this notice in the mail from the sheriff saying they're going to auction it off because it's a commercial mortgage foreclosure.
A first person account of a counterparty splitting proceedings between a personal action and a separate action against his limited liability company, while the action he brought is said to be still in court. This is the entity name split described from the inside, the phenomenon that makes company name docket searches necessary. His remark that the separate suit is not valid is his own characterisation, not a ruling.
Why this classification: Describes filings made by the opposing side and their effect on him rather than filings of his own, and names no entity, bank, court or docket number beyond the LLC.
Watch at 00:16 — youtube.com ↗Like I responded to all the court hearings, all the actions. I don't know how they're allowed to do this and seize the property, but this is absolutely crazy. This might be some crooked stuff.
Asserts that he responded to all hearings and actions, and characterises the outcome as possibly crooked. The allegation names no judge, court or official. Recorded as what the speaker said, never as a finding.
Why this classification: The bias allegation is hedged with might be and aimed at no identified court or official, and the rest of the statement reports his own compliance rather than any filing.
Watch at 00:32 — youtube.com ↗And then today, what's [ __ ] insane is I got a notice that my building's being foreclosed on. Now, I filed a lawsuit last year. This issue is in the court system. It was being resolved, but they went to some crooked lawyer and filed new lawsuits against different entities and got a judgment against my building.
He confirms a suit he filed the previous year over the bank dispute and describes the bank filing new lawsuits against different entities that produced a judgment against his building, on the day he says a foreclosure notice arrived.
Why this classification: Moderate because it confirms a filing he made, which is a filing-conduct factor but not one of the three core factors, so Strong is unavailable. Both halves match the tracker on dates and subject matter, but he names no case number, no court and no entity, so the case links are inferences from the record rather than identifications he made.
Watch at 01:02 — youtube.com ↗Now, I responded to those lawsuits, but the judge probably ignore them because you can't represent yourself prosay. However, I also filed motions to consolidate in my prosay case, which I'm guessing the judge didn't even bother to look at.
Confirms filings he has made, responses to the bank's actions and motions to consolidate, and alleges in the same breath that the judge disregards them because he is unrepresented.
Why this classification: Moderate on two counts that are both non-core: he confirms filings he has made, and he alleges that the forum is disregarding them. The consolidation motions are a concrete and checkable docket claim, which is what gives this quote its value; the disregard is an expectation he states, not a ruling, and no judge is named or identifiable.
Watch at 01:25 — youtube.com ↗So hopefully we can pay some bills this week and our shipping doesn't get shut down and then we can sort out the stuff with the foreclosure and the mortgage next week. But I haven't even been able to go to the courthouse or do anything.
Places a foreclosure and a mortgage matter as live and imminent at the date of publication and states that illness has kept him from going to the courthouse. No bank, case or docket is named.
Why this classification: Moderate because it dates the foreclosure strand of a tracked dispute and speaks to his capacity to prosecute or defend, while announcing no filing and describing no filing decision. The link to the pending mortgage foreclosure action rests on subject matter and timing alone.
Watch at 00:32 — youtube.com ↗I mean, this is why my building's getting foreclosed on because we're not making any money.
A dated, on-camera acknowledgement that a foreclosure is under way against his building, which he attributes to the business not making money. He names neither the bank, nor the case, nor the property; C103 is the only mortgage-foreclosure action in the dataset and was pending on the publication date.
Why this classification: Moderate because it records a proceeding brought against him rather than any filing of his own, and the identification of the case rests on a foreclosure against his company being pending when the video published, not on anything he names.
Watch at 00:35 — youtube.com ↗You guys know we've been having a hard time with the uh bank trying to foreclose on the property. Thankfully, uh we got a lot of orders and we had enough working capital to pay off the bank loan and just No, we didn't really pay off the bank loan. We came to an agreement in the court and I paid the bank X amount of money. It wasn't too crazy, but you know, it was enough money that I I still am not able to make my bills, but you know, they're not necessarily bills that need to be paid. It's not like I'm losing my building anymore.
the strongest finding in this slice. This is the speaker's own account of why the four Fidelity Bank dockets ended when they did — a negotiated payment, reached "in the court", that stopped the sheriff's sale of his building. A praecipe for discontinuance does not state its consideration, so the docket record cannot supply this; the video can. He self-corrects mid-sentence from "pay off the bank loan" to "we came to an agreement", which is the substantive detail. Tier is Moderate, not Strong: the Strong rubric requires a core filing-conduct factor and this describes a settlement, not a filing. The factor is No filing-conduct factor for the same reason — a negotiated discontinuance is neither a filing he made nor a ruling against him — and the outcome itself is written up here so the call stays auditable.
Watch at 00:04 — youtube.com ↗Each video has its own research page with its verified publish date, timestamped statements and case links. A researched link between a video and a docket record is not a finding of causation in either direction.
Frank Tufano Litigation Research. "Fidelity Bank v. FRM LLC (2025-07728)". Research last verified September 23, 2026. https://suedbyfranktufano.com/cases/2025-07728-fidelity-bank-v-frm-llc/