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Case research · C098
Frank Tufano v. Social Security Administration et al
66298/2025 · New York State Supreme Court
Pending; by Opinion and Order of Sept. 21, 2026 the court dismissed the civil-conspiracy claim against The IMA Group and denied the rest of its motion, so the medical-malpractice claim proceeds; IMA answered Oct. 2, 2026 and the Social Security Administration’s own dispositive motion is undecidedRemoved to federal courtNew York
CourtNew York State Supreme Court
FiledJuly 2, 2025
StatusPending; by Opinion and Order of Sept. 21, 2026 the court dismissed the civil-conspiracy claim against The IMA Group and denied the rest of its motion, so the medical-malpractice claim proceeds; IMA answered Oct. 2, 2026 and the Social Security Administration’s own dispositive motion is undecided
OutcomeRemoved to federal court
Final dispositionState docket disposed by removal; federal action pending; the SSA's combined Rule 12(b)(1)/Rule 56 motion was denied without prejudice on procedural grounds (2026-06-17) and re-filed Aug. 19-20, 2026
JurisdictionNew York
Pro seYes
Current / transferee courtU.S. District Court, Southern District of New York
Transferred case7:25-cv-06515
Last researchedOctober 23, 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 alleges four causes of action against the Social Security Administration and its examination contractor, The IMA Group: fraud, deprivation of rights under color of law (14th Amendment / 18 U.S.C. § 242), civil conspiracy, and medical-malpractice injury.
The complaint alleges SSA wrongfully denied disability benefits despite documented, disabling vision impairment from a November 2023 eye surgery, that SSA and IMA Group “fraudulently ignored” his disabled status for institutional financial gain, and that an IMA Group physician's May 29, 2025 eye exam — including forcibly holding his head/eyes during dilation and instrumentation — caused new migraines, pain, and eye asymmetry. Plaintiff demands a jury trial and seeks roughly $1.83 million (projected 40 years of SSA benefits) plus $6,000 and $25,000 in exam-related medical damages.
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: NYSCEF records a Notice of Removal/Remand filed Aug. 7, 2025. The action was opened in the Southern District of New York as 7:25-cv-06515. The latest accessible federal docket snapshot (retrieved June 18, 2026) showed a motion to dismiss fully briefed and no final disposition. Update 2026-08-15: SSA's Motion for Summary Judgment (filed June 16, 2026) was denied without prejudice June 17-18, 2026 "for failure to comply with this Court's Individual Practices" (a related extension motion was denied as moot the same day) -- order read in full. A filing typed "Conference" was entered June 29, 2026 and an "Order on Motion for Conference" issued July 20, 2026 (both title only, not read; corrected Aug. 25, 2026 -- see below). The most recent docket activity is a mailing receipt dated July 21, 2026. The case remains pending; no dismissal or judgment has been entered.
Update 2026-08-25: Three documents were read in full and they correct two points in this record. First, the June 16, 2026 filing was not a motion for summary judgment: it was a combined motion in which the Social Security Administration moved "for dismissal of the above-captioned complaint under Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1) and 56," and the denial was purely procedural -- "Motion denied without prejudice for failure to comply with this Court's Individual Practices" -- because the government's papers were not completely filed until 12:05 a.m. Second, the earlier statement that a status conference was held June 29, 2026 is not supported: the June 29 entry is a filing typed "Conference" and the July 20 entry is an "Order on Motion for Conference," neither of which was read. The February-to-June 2026 gap is explained by an order of June 1, 2026 recording that the case was stayed for forty-three days under Amended Standing Order M10-468 pending the restoration of Department of Justice funding. The SSA re-filed its dispositive motion on Aug. 19-20, 2026 (entries 36-42: motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction, memorandum of law, three declarations, a Rule 56.1 statement and a notice); those entries are recorded by title only and the documents were not read.
Update 2026-10-03: The first merits ruling in this action has issued and was read in full. By Opinion and Order of Sept. 21, 2026 (Doc. 44, ten pages), the Hon. Philip M. Halpern decided The IMA Group’s motion to dismiss. The complaint pleads four claims: fraud against the Social Security Administration; a claim under 18 U.S.C. § 242 and the Fourteenth Amendment against the same defendant; civil conspiracy against both defendants; and medical malpractice against both. Because the first two are not pled against IMA, the court considered only the third and fourth on this motion. It held that "IMA’s motion to dismiss is GRANTED as to Plaintiff’s civil conspiracy claim but otherwise DENIED," and denied the request for leave to amend that was made in the alternative in the opposition brief. IMA was directed to answer within fourteen days and did so on Oct. 2, 2026, filing an answer, a Rule 7.1 corporate disclosure statement and a reply memorandum. The court expressly did not reach the Social Security Administration’s combined Rule 12(b)(1) and Rule 56 motion, recording that it was "not, as of this date, fully submitted." The medical-malpractice claim therefore survives dismissal and the action continues.
Research status: Source-backed (the Sept. 21, 2026 Opinion and Order read in full via the RECAP document store); the Oct. 2, 2026 answer and accompanying filings recorded by docket-entry title only
Research notes: NYSCEF Case Status: Disposed. State docket shows removal on Aug. 7, 2025. The federal docket identifies the same plaintiff and defendants and was still active in the latest public snapshot.
Update 2026-08-25: The docket is fully mirrored (all 42 entries), so the absence of later entries is a real absence rather than a coverage gap. Entry 15, a motion to dismiss filed Dec. 15, 2025 and fully briefed by Feb. 10, 2026, still has no ruling. By elimination it is most likely The IMA Group's motion, but the party/counsel panel was not retrievable and that attribution is an inference. The August 2026 package is composition-identical to the June filing, so it most probably re-files the same combined Rule 12(b)(1)/Rule 56 motion after curing the Individual Practices defect -- again an inference, recorded as such until a document is read.
Update 2026-10-23: one further entry has been docketed since the Oct. 11 check, a notice of appearance entered Oct. 23, 2026 as entry 50. It is recorded by docket-entry title only. No disposition has issued and the Sept. 21, 2026 Opinion and Order remains the newest substantive ruling.
Court & ruling records
Findings recorded only where they are tied to an order, opinion or report and recommendation.
Denied the Social Security Administration's motion for summary judgment without prejudice, for failure to comply with the Court's Individual Practices; a related motion for an extension was denied as moot the same day. Correction 2026-08-25: the moving papers, read in full, show this was not a motion for summary judgment alone. The Social Security Administration moved "for dismissal of the above-captioned complaint under Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1) and 56." The denial was purely procedural -- "Motion denied without prejudice for failure to comply with this Court's Individual Practices" -- because the government's papers were not completely filed until 12:05 a.m. The motion was re-filed Aug. 19-20, 2026.
Opinion and order on a motion to dismiss (partial)
Court order / opinionSeptember 21, 2026
Granted The IMA Group’s motion to dismiss as to the civil-conspiracy claim and denied it in all other respects, so the medical-malpractice claim against that defendant proceeds. The alternative request for leave to amend, made in the opposition brief, was denied. IMA was directed to answer within fourteen days and the motion sequence was terminated. The court did not reach the Social Security Administration’s combined Rule 12(b)(1) and Rule 56 motion, recording that it was not yet fully submitted. Of the four claims pled, only civil conspiracy and medical malpractice were before the court on this motion, the other two not having been pled against this defendant.
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.
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.
guys I don't know what the [ __ ] this doctor did to me he said I'm going to look like a freak for another few months
The earliest contemporaneous on-camera characterisation of the index eye surgery located so far in this archive — ten days post-op, and three days before the 2023-12-14 surgery vlog that stands as the eye-surgery cluster's contemporaneous record. It is a statement of dissatisfaction with the surgical result, attributed to the surgeon in the second person ("this doctor"), and it reports the surgeon's own prognosis of "another few months." This cuts against the verified record of that surgery vlog, in which he is positive about the outcome ("still looks really good," "I'm pretty sure it was the right decision," twice "I can't blame the doctor"). Both readings are recorded and neither is resolved. No surgeon is named, here or anywhere in the video's captions — identification would be by procedure and date only.
Transcript-verified verbatim quote
Source removed. Quoted at 00:03 in the archived transcript.
So, I guess you got to file a lawsuit against the DEA, too. This whole situation is is completely ridiculous. had to file a lawsuit against disability [subject dropped by the captions] because apparently lying in bed disfigured half blind doesn't qualify you for disability.
Two distinct filing-conduct statements land back to back, which is why this quote carries two factors. The DEA suit is framed as something one would have to do — prospective, and no DEA action exists anywhere in the case tracker, so it appears never to have been filed. The disability suit is stated in the past tense as already done, and it matches a real docket entry: C098, Frank Tufano v. Social Security Administration et al (New York State Supreme Court 66298/2025), filed 2025-07-02, removed to the Southern District of New York as 7:25-cv-06515 on 2025-08-07. Neither factor is core, so the tier stops at Moderate even though the case link is unusually solid.
Transcript-verified verbatim quote
Source removed. Quoted at 02:15 in the archived transcript.
I filed for disability with New York State. It's been 2 years. I've had to sue the Social Security Administration. I have an active lawsuit against the doctor that botched me and they're just dragging it on and on.
Two separate filings confirmed in his own words, one of them against a defendant he names verbatim. The Social Security suit maps to the tracked New York action, which was filed 2025-07-02 and pending at publication; the doctor is never named, so the two California actions are a dataset-derived inference. The framing that he has had to sue, and the complaint that the doctor's case is being drawn out, are both worth preserving as spoken.
Why this classification: He confirms two existing actions rather than a repeat filing, a new action after an adverse decision, or a cost-imposition motive; the delay he complains of is not an adverse ruling, and he describes two distinct matters rather than a refiling, so no core factor applies and the case identification is inferred rather than stated.
Transcript-verified verbatim quote
Source removed. Quoted at 00:30 in the archived transcript.
Since I was botched in November 2023 by Dr. Tobon, it's like two years and seven, eight months now. I've undergone eight revision procedures to fix my eyes and I've been put on disability by the government.
Three checkable assertions in one sentence: an index date of November 2023 for the procedure underlying the eye-surgery dispute, a count of eight revision procedures, and a claim that he has been granted government disability. The date corroborates what the tracked pleadings are recorded as alleging; the disability claim is in tension with the tracked Social Security action, which is recorded as alleging a wrongful denial, and the archive does not resolve that tension.
Why this classification: It supplies a dated index event, a procedure count and a benefits claim for a tracked dispute, and names the surgeon, but it describes injury and status rather than any filing conduct, and identifies no case, court or docket. The disability assertion is recorded as a party statement, not as a fact about his benefits.
Transcript-verified verbatim quote
Source removed.
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.
Frank Tufano Litigation Research. "Frank Tufano v. Social Security Administration et al (66298/2025)". Research last verified October 23, 2026. https://suedbyfranktufano.com/cases/66298-2025-frank-tufano-v-social-security-administration-et-al/