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Case research · C051
Tufano v. Fenix Internet LLC
3:25-cv-00976 · U.S. District Court, Middle District of Pennsylvania
Closed; complaint dismissed without prejudice under Fed. R. Civ. P. 4(m) for failure to serveComplaint dismissed without prejudice under Fed. R. Civ. P. 4(m); report and recommendation adopted over the plaintiff’s objectionsPennsylvania
CourtU.S. District Court, Middle District of Pennsylvania
FiledJune 2, 2025
StatusClosed; complaint dismissed without prejudice under Fed. R. Civ. P. 4(m) for failure to serve
OutcomeComplaint dismissed without prejudice under Fed. R. Civ. P. 4(m); report and recommendation adopted over the plaintiff’s objections
Final dispositionDismissed without prejudice
JurisdictionPennsylvania
Pro se—
Current / transferee court—
Transferred case—
Last researchedOctober 17, 2026
About this case
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.
Plaintiff sued Fenix Internet LLC, doing business as OnlyFans. The docket records a cause of action citing 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act), indicating an allegation framed in civil-rights terms against a private company. Filed June 2, 2025, with a contemporaneous motion to proceed in forma pauperis. The factual basis and relief sought are not detailed in the indexed materials reviewed.
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: On July 28, 2026, the court denied Tufano's motion for default judgment and set an Aug. 27, 2026 deadline for proof of service under Fed. R. Civ. P. 4(m), on pain of dismissal. Most recent docket entry as of this pass (Aug. 13, 2026) is Tufano's response to that order.
Update 2026-10-15: the case is closed. By order of Oct. 15, 2026, Judge Julia K. Munley overruled Tufano's objections, adopted Magistrate Judge Phillip J. Caraballo's report and recommendation of Oct. 1, 2026 in its entirety, dismissed the complaint without prejudice under Fed. R. Civ. P. 4(m) for failure to serve, and directed the Clerk of Court to close the case. The order records that a summons issued on Apr. 8, 2026 and that Caraballo entered show cause orders on July 28, 2026 and Sept. 3, 2026 -- the 111-day and 148-day marks -- each directing Tufano to provide proof of service and warning that the case was subject to dismissal under Rule 4(m) without it. Tufano objected, asserting that he served Fenix on Sept. 9, 2026, and attached a proof-of-service form showing a process server had left the complaint and summons with a registered agent in Wilmington, Delaware. The court held that form deficient because it carries the civil case number 25-CV-3931, which Lackawanna County assigned to a different action against Fenix -- the action removed to this court as No. 3:25-cv-01165 -- and so does not show that Fenix was served in this case.
Research status: Source-backed (terminating order read in full from the free federal record)
Research notes: Docket snapshot only. C052 (same DSP005 dispute) was stayed in Dec. 2025 pending resolution of this case.
Update 2026-10-03: The lapsed proof-of-service deadline could not be resolved, and the reason is now precisely established. Two independent free mirrors of this docket stop at the same point: both hold four entries ending June 16, 2025, and the one free docket summary that covers the case was itself last retrieved on that date. The denial of default judgment of July 28, 2026 and the Aug. 27, 2026 deadline under Rule 4(m) therefore rest solely on a subscription tracker a reader cannot open, which refused every request this pass. No published opinion exists. What the free record does now establish, for the first time, is the case’s own identity and coding: the defendant is named as Fenix Internet LLC doing business as OnlyFans, the case is assigned to Magistrate Judge Phillip J. Caraballo, and the complaint was lodged pending disposition of an in-forma-pauperis motion that was granted June 16, 2025 with service held in abeyance pending screening.
Update 2026-10-17: the subscription-only gap recorded above is closed. The order terminating the case was filed to the free federal mirror and its full text was read for this pass, so the Rule 4(m) sequence no longer rests on a docket service a reader cannot open. The order independently confirms the July 28, 2026 show cause order recorded here from the subscription docket, and adds a second one of Sept. 3, 2026 that was not previously on file. A footnote to the order addresses Tufano's assertion that the magistrate judge had ignored his proof-of-service filings, stating that review of the docket discredits that statement.
Record labels distinguish final orders/opinions, reports and recommendations, non-final orders, and tentative/indexed ruling records.
Rule 4(m) dismissal for failure to serve (Order adopting R&R)
Report & recommendationOctober 15, 2026
The court overruled the plaintiff’s objections, adopted Magistrate Judge Phillip J. Caraballo’s report and recommendation of Oct. 1, 2026 in its entirety, dismissed the complaint without prejudice under Fed. R. Civ. P. 4(m) for failure to serve the defendant, and directed the Clerk of Court to close the case. A summons had issued on Apr. 8, 2026, and show cause orders of July 28 and Sept. 3, 2026 had each directed the plaintiff to provide proof of service and warned that the case was subject to Rule 4(m) dismissal without it. The plaintiff’s proof-of-service form, filed with his objections and dated Sept. 9, 2026, was held deficient because it bears the case number of a different action against the same defendant.
Non-final order (action stayed pending related case)
The court stayed C052 until 30 days following resolution of the related action C051 (3:25-cv-00976). No lift-stay entry appears on the docket as of 2026-08-21, so the amended default-judgment motions Tufano filed in C052 on 2026-06-10 and 2026-06-23 were both filed while the stay was in effect.
The court denied Tufano's motion for default judgment in C051 and set an Aug. 27, 2026 deadline for proof of service under Fed. R. Civ. P. 4(m), on pain of dismissal.
Final order (dismissed without prejudice; case closed)
The court dismissed C051 without prejudice under Fed. R. Civ. P. 4(m) for failure to serve Fenix Internet, adopting the magistrate judge’s report and recommendation over the plaintiff’s objections, and closed the case. The proof of service the plaintiff offered carried the case number of the companion action C052, not this one.
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.
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These quotations can no longer be checked at their source. Every quotation on this site was transcribed from the speaker’s own YouTube channel. That channel was removed in October 2026; on 23 October 2026 all 980 catalogued video ids returned “not found”, and the channel address itself no longer resolves. YouTube’s own basis for removing it is not part of any record this project can verify, so none is asserted here. Nothing was withdrawn by this project.
What survives is the evidence, not the link. The verbatim caption transcript each quotation was read from was archived, dated, at the time the video was catalogued, and the timestamp on each card is the moment in that transcript where the words appear. The transcripts are held unaltered and are not republished. What a reader can no longer do is open the original and hear it, and nothing on this site can restore that. Seventy-four statements — those whose own words name a core filing-restriction factor — survive as clips in this project’s own compilation, and those cards link into it at the right moment. Nothing else is re-hosted. See Methodology.
do you want me to do making the only fans so I can rake in thousands of dollars a month that I can use to sue you morons so you can pay me your mediocre paychecks to the rest of your lives
One sentence naming both the platform that becomes a defendant in the tracked DSP005 Fenix/OnlyFans actions (C011, C042, C051, C052) and a prospective intention to sue his critics. Rhetorical in register, but it is a stated plan to litigate funded by a named platform, 1,059 days before the February-2023 account ban those actions plead (2020-03-09 to 2023-02-01, using the 1st because the ban day is not recorded; differenced in code). Possible case/dispute link: ⚠ Not DSP005. The platform matches but the grievance does not: in 2020 he describes opening an account, whereas C011/C042/C051/C052 plead a 2023 ban and refusal to reinstate. Recorded as a dated chronology fact about his relationship to that platform only. The "sue you morons" half links to no tracked case — the targets are unnamed critics.
Transcript-verified verbatim quote
Source removed. Quoted at 03:45 in the archived transcript.
This week, we filed a case in both the federal court and the state court. As if a judge is going to do the right thing, though. They're probably just going to dismiss the case and I'm going to be screwed as usual, losing money.
A self-reported parallel filing that the docket independently confirms. In the ten days before publication the tracker records exactly that pattern, twice over: C050 (M.D. Pa. 3:25-cv-00975) and C051 (M.D. Pa. 3:25-cv-00976) filed 2025-06-02, and C013 (Lackawanna 2025-04276, Tufano v. Shopify) and C014 (Lackawanna 2025-04277, Tufano v. TikTok) filed 2025-06-06. This is one of the rare cases where a self-report about filing conduct can be checked against the docket and matches. The second half alleges the outcome is predetermined ("as if a judge is going to do the right thing"), which is Judicial or forum bias alleged.
Transcript-verified verbatim quote
Source removed. Quoted at 00:47 in the archived transcript.
Related video research
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.
They want me GONEDirect case reference · Video · March 9, 2020 · link confidence MediumSource removed
Cite this page
Frank Tufano Litigation Research. "Tufano v. Fenix Internet LLC (3:25-cv-00976)". Research last verified October 17, 2026. https://suedbyfranktufano.com/cases/3-25-cv-00976-tufano-v-fenix-internet-llc/