This settlement covers the November 2024 cyberattack on Albany Gastroenterology Consultants, the Albany, New York practice whose settlement agreement says roughly 57,751 people had Social Security numbers, medical information and other records potentially reached. If a notice arrived, two years of medical identity monitoring is already yours with no claim form — but the cash side is a separate filing that closes October 5, 2026, and the deadline to opt out or object comes much sooner, on August 21.
Current Status
Claims are open. The deadline to file a Claim Form is October 5, 2026, and the Settlement Agreement sets the online cutoff at 11:59 p.m. Eastern that day; mailed forms must be postmarked by the same date. The deadline to exclude yourself or object is much earlier — August 21, 2026 — so the two dates are six weeks apart and it is easy to miss the first one. The Circuit Court of Miami-Dade County, Florida authorized the notice program, and the Final Approval Hearing is set for September 22, 2026 at 9:00 a.m. Eastern. No final approval order has been entered and no payment date has been announced.What Changed Recently?
The claim window is open and the notice program has run. The case is Clements v. Albany Gastroenterology Consultants, PLLC, Case No. 2026-008885-CA-01, in the Circuit Court of Miami-Dade County, Florida, with Simpluris administering. Postcards carrying each class member's LoginID and PIN, plus a separate credit monitoring enrollment code, have gone out to the class list.The incident behind the case is dated November 10, 2024. According to the Settlement Agreement's own recitals, Albany Gastro experienced a data breach on or about that date, launched an investigation, and the investigation revealed that the names, addresses, medical information, medical insurance information, Social Security numbers and/or other personal and protected health information of approximately 57,751 individuals were potentially impacted. The company began sending breach notices to those individuals on January 28, 2025. The Notice describes the event as a targeted cyberattack on Albany Gastro's computer systems in which certain files containing private information were accessed.
One wrinkle sits inside the paperwork. The Settlement Agreement defines the term "Private Information" narrowly, as names and Social Security numbers, even though the same document's factual recitals describe a wider set of medical and insurance records as potentially impacted. The class definition and the release both turn on that defined term, which is worth knowing if you are weighing whether to stay in.
Albany Gastro denies that it did anything wrong, and the Notice states plainly that the Court has not decided who is right. Both sides agreed to settle to avoid the costs, risks, disruptions and uncertainties of continued litigation.
Who Qualifies?
The Court defined the Class as all persons who received direct notice that their Private Information may have been compromised as a result of the Data Breach. That is the entire test. There is no state residency requirement, no requirement that you still be a patient, and nothing to prove about the treatment you received — if a notice reached you, the records place you in the class. The Notice adds that Albany Gastro's records indicate class members are entitled to benefits, and that some people may have received an earlier notice directly from the practice in 2025.Excluded from the Class are Albany Gastro along with its officers, directors and related companies; governmental entities; and the judge assigned to the case, that judge's family and court staff. Anyone who validly excludes themselves is also out.
The case travelled a long way to get here. As the Settlement Agreement's procedural history recounts, multiple class actions were filed in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, Albany County, beginning in late January 2025 and consolidated that April, and Albany Gastro moved to dismiss the consolidated complaint in July 2025. The parties then began settlement discussions, stayed the case in December 2025, and, in the agreement's words, decided during negotiations that venue was proper in the Miami-Dade court. The New York actions were dismissed and the present complaint was filed in Florida on May 1, 2026, alleging negligence, negligence per se, unjust enrichment, breach of implied contract, breach of fiduciary duty and breach of confidence on behalf of a national class. Those are allegations; no court has ruled on them.
How Much Can You Get?
The structure here is unusual in a way that favors people who do nothing: the monitoring is automatic and the cash is not.• Medical identity monitoring. Two years of CyEx Medical Shield Complete, which the Notice describes as carrying $1 million of medical identity theft insurance and monitoring for healthcare insurance ID exposure, Medical Record Number exposure and unauthorized Health Savings Account spending, with access to a fraud resolution agent if something turns up. Every settlement class member was mailed an enrollment code and no claim form is needed to receive it. Codes cannot be activated until the Court grants final approval and the other conditions in the Settlement Agreement are met.
• Cash Payment A — documented costs. Up to $2,500.00 for actual, documented, unreimbursed out-of-pocket losses caused by the breach. The listed categories are losses from identity theft or fraud; fees for credit reports, credit monitoring, or freezing and unfreezing credit; the cost of replacing IDs; and postage to contact banks by mail. Nothing is paid for an expense a third party already reimbursed.
• Cash Payment B — alternative cash. A one-time pro rata cash payment the Notice expects to be $10.00, with no proof or explanation required.
You take one cash option or the other, not both. If you file for Cash Payment A without adequate documentation, or the administrator rejects the claim for any reason and you do not cure it, the Settlement Agreement says the claim is automatically converted into a claim for Cash Payment B — so a failed documented claim does not drop you to zero. A denied claimant may also seek review by a third-party claims referee.
The cap deserves a close read. Total cash benefits are capped at $200,000.00, but that figure is split into a $100,000.00 cap for Cash Payment A and a separate $100,000.00 cap for Cash Payment B, with the pro rata reduction applied inside each option on its own. That separation is genuinely useful to class members: approved $2,500 claims cannot drain the pool funding the flat payments. At $10 apiece, $100,000 covers roughly 10,000 flat claims before any reduction starts — arithmetic from the published cap, not a prediction of the claims rate. Against a class of about 57,751 people, a high claims rate would push the flat payment below $10.
Nothing else comes out of that money. Class Counsel will ask the Court to approve $300,000.00 in attorneys' fees and litigation costs and service awards of $2,500.00 for each class representative, and the Notice states that Albany Gastro pays both. The Settlement Agreement says the same of administration costs, which it caps at $92,662.00. The Court decides the fee and award amounts and may approve less.
What Proof or Notice ID Is Required?
To file a cash claim online you need the LoginID and PIN printed on the notice mailed to you, which makes this settlement Proof Required: Yes even for the $10 payment that needs no receipts. The official settlement website's claim portal is gated on those two credentials before any benefit can be selected. If you cannot locate them, the site's contact page is the route to ask the Settlement Administrator for a replacement, and a printable Claim Form is available for anyone who prefers to mail one — the paper version treats the Notice ID as optional, listing it as "if known."The $2,500 tier adds real evidentiary requirements on top. You must send proof such as bank statements or receipts showing what you spent or lost, along with a description of each item claimed. Self-prepared notes or papers may be submitted to explain or support other proof, but the Notice is explicit that they are not enough on their own to make a valid claim, and the proof should show the expense was because of the breach. The administrator has sole authority to decide whether a claim is valid and may send a Notice of Deficiency asking for more; you then have until the claim deadline, or 15 days from the date the notice was sent, whichever is later, to respond.
The loss window carries a small inconsistency worth knowing. The Notice, the FAQ and the Claim Form all say eligible losses must have occurred between November 10, 2024 and October 5, 2026. The Settlement Agreement frames the same window differently, running from the date Albany Gastro sent breach notice — which it elsewhere dates to January 28, 2025 — through the claim deadline. The class-facing documents give the wider range, and those are the documents the claim form is built on.
The monitoring runs on a third credential entirely: the enrollment code mailed with your notice, which is separate from both the LoginID and the PIN.
What Is the Deadline?
October 5, 2026 is the deadline to submit a Claim Form, online or by mail. The Settlement Agreement's definition of a Valid Claim sets the online cutoff at 11:59 p.m. Eastern time on that date; a mailed form must be postmarked no later than the same day.Important: the deadline to exclude yourself or to object is August 21, 2026 — six weeks before the claim deadline and, for anyone reading this in August, close at hand. Missing it does not cost you your claim, but it does end your ability to leave the settlement or to be heard about it.
Excluding yourself has its own mechanics. A Request for Exclusion must be personally signed and must identify the case, give your full name, mailing address, telephone number and email address, and include the words "Request for Exclusion" or a clear equivalent. You may only exclude yourself, not anyone else, and it must be postmarked by August 21. Objecting is more demanding: an objection has to be filed with the Clerk of Court by the same date and copied to the Settlement Administrator, Class Counsel and defense counsel, and it must set out every reason you object with any legal support, name any lawyer you have retained, list every objection you or that lawyer filed in the past five years along with the orders ruling on them, state whether either of you wants to speak at the hearing, list any witnesses or documents you plan to present, and carry your own signature — a lawyer's signature alone is not enough. The Notice says an objection must meet each of those requirements to be valid.
How Do You Take Action?
File through the official settlement website at Albany Gastro Data Settlement.com, using the LoginID and PIN from your notice. The same site hosts the Notice, the Claim Form and the full Settlement Agreement, whose terms control over any summary — including this one — along with an Enrollment Instructions Request form for class members who need help with the monitoring code.Filers choosing a cash benefit also pick how they want to be paid. The Claim Form offers PayPal, Venmo, Zelle, a virtual prepaid card, or a physical check mailed to the address on the form. Only one Claim Form per class member is allowed, online or on paper, and the administrator screens for duplicates. Anyone who has requested exclusion should not file a claim at all.
If you do nothing, you still keep the credit monitoring — the enrollment code is not conditioned on a claim — but you receive no cash and you remain bound by the release, which gives up claims against Albany Gastro and the other released parties arising out of the breach.
What Happens Next?
The Final Approval Hearing is scheduled for September 22, 2026 at 9:00 a.m. Eastern at the Miami-Dade County Courthouse. At that hearing the Court decides whether to approve the settlement, rules on Class Counsel's fee request and the service awards, and considers any objections. Attendance is optional; the Notice cautions that the date and time may change without further notice, so the official settlement website is the place to confirm it.A hearing being held is not the same as approval being granted. The Notice states that if the Court approves the settlement there may be appeals, that it is not known whether any will be filed or how long they would take to resolve, and that payments are distributed only after final approval and after any appeals are resolved. The Settlement Agreement puts numbers on the sequence: the administrator invoices Albany Gastro for valid claims within five days of the Effective Date, Albany Gastro pays within 25 days of that invoice, and cash benefits are distributed no later than 60 days after the Effective Date. The Effective Date itself arrives 30 days after final approval if nobody appeals.
Note also that paper checks must be negotiated within 90 days of issue. This settlement is one of several recent medical-provider breach cases moving through claims at the same time — see the open data breach settlements tracker for the rest, and the data breach class action explainer if the process itself is new to you.
Sources and Verification
• Official settlement website — Albany Gastro Data Settlement.com• Notice of Proposed Class Action Settlement, Clements v. Albany Gastroenterology Consultants, PLLC
• Settlement Agreement and its exhibits (Claim Form, Long Form Notice, Postcard Notice, proposed Preliminary Approval Order)
• Frequently Asked Questions page maintained by the Settlement Administrator, Simpluris
• Clements v. Albany Gastroenterology Consultants, PLLC, Case No. 2026-008885-CA-01, Circuit Court of the Eleventh Judicial Circuit, Miami-Dade County, Florida
Questions
Is a $10 claim worth filing if the monitoring is already automatic?
That is the honest question on this settlement, and only you can answer it. The credit monitoring arrives without a claim form, so filing buys you the cash and nothing else. Cash Payment B is expected to be $10.00 and takes a few minutes online. If you have documented out-of-pocket losses from the breach, the calculus changes completely — Cash Payment A reimburses up to $2,500.00, which is 250 times the flat payment, and it draws on its own $100,000 pool rather than competing with the flat payments.
Can I claim both cash options?
No. The FAQ on the official settlement website says class members may claim one of the Cash Payment options, and the Claim Form warns against checking both boxes. If you file for Cash Payment A and the administrator rejects it for missing documentation and you do not cure the deficiency, the Settlement Agreement says your claim is automatically treated as a claim for Cash Payment B instead, so a failed documented claim does not leave you with nothing.
Why do the two cash options have separate caps?
The $200,000 total cap is split into a $100,000 cap for Cash Payment A and a separate $100,000 cap for Cash Payment B, and the pro rata reduction is applied within each option on its own. That structure matters for a class of roughly 57,751 people: approved documented-loss claims cannot eat into the money set aside for the flat payments, and vice versa. It also means the $10 figure is an expectation rather than a guarantee — at $10 apiece, $100,000 covers about 10,000 flat claims before any reduction begins.
Do the attorneys' fees reduce what class members receive?
No. Class Counsel will ask the Court to approve $300,000.00 in attorneys' fees and litigation costs and service awards of $2,500.00 for each class representative, and the Notice states that Albany Gastro pays both. The Settlement Agreement says the same about administration costs, which it caps at $92,662.00. None of that comes out of the $200,000 available for cash benefits. The Court decides those amounts and may award less.
The case is against a New York practice. Why is it in a Florida court?
The Settlement Agreement's procedural history explains the route. Multiple class actions were filed in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, Albany County, beginning in late January 2025 and consolidated on April 4, 2025. After Albany Gastro moved to dismiss the consolidated complaint, the parties began settlement talks and, in the agreement's words, decided during negotiations that venue was proper in the Miami-Dade court. The New York actions were dismissed and the present complaint was filed in Florida on May 1, 2026. The class definition is nationwide, so where the case sits does not limit who can claim.
I never got an enrollment code. Can I still get the monitoring?
The FAQ says enrollment codes were mailed to settlement class members and directs anyone who believes they are a class member but did not receive one to contact the Settlement Administrator. The official settlement website also runs an Enrollment Instructions Request form for exactly that purpose. Codes cannot be activated until the Court grants final approval and the other conditions in the Settlement Agreement are satisfied.
