Skill games in a Virginia corner store. (Ned Oliver/Virginia Mercury)
A retired state police corporal who worked for the company that expanded gaming into Pennsylvania communities with its controversial skill games is accused of using his position to aid the proliferation of illegal video gambling devices across the commonwealth.
Ricky Goodling, who worked as national compliance director for Georgia-based Pace-O-Matic until 2023, was charged last month by the Pennsylvania attorney general’s office with racketeering and related offenses following a years-long undercover Pennsylvania State Police investigation.
The Pennsylvania attorney general’s office alleges Goodling took more than $500,000 in kickbacks to quash complaints about illegal slot machines. Prosecutors also allege Goodling helped distributors of the illegal devices obtain Pace-O-Matic’s machines in an attempt to deflect law enforcement scrutiny. An attorney for Goodling told the Capital-Star on Friday that he had no comment.
Also charged are three employees of Deibler Brothers Novelty Co., a Schuylkill County company that prosecutors say distributed illegal gambling machines in 15 central and eastern Pennsylvania counties. An attorney for the company’s principal owner, Arthur Deibler, said his client is presumed innocent and that he looks forward to defending the case at trial.
A spokesperson for the attorney general’s office, which did not announce or publicize the charges after they were filed, deferred to the charging documents when asked for comment. The charges were first reported Dec. 19 by the Schuylkill County news website Coal Region Canary.
Charging documents say a grand jury in Pittsburgh conducted a related investigation into another illegal gambling enterprise that distributed illegal machines in 18 western Pennsylvania counties as well as Delaware County in the southeast part of the state. Goodling also received kickbacks from the western Pennsylvania company, prosecutors say.
The attorney general’s office spokesman did not say whether charges had been filed in the Pittsburgh grand jury investigation and no record of charges against the individuals mentioned in the charging documents appears online.
Pace-O-Matic is the state’s leading distributor of skill games – slot machine-like devices that allow users to make a wager to win a jackpot. The company says the machines provide vital income for small businesses and nonprofit fraternal organizations such as American Legion posts, which receive a share of the money from the machines.
But not everyone views skill games as beneficial.
Skill games in court
Skill games have been the subject of a string of court decisions establishing that they are legal in as much as they are not subject to regulation under Pennsylvania’s Gaming Control Act. The state Supreme Court is currently considering Attorney General Michelle Henry’s challenge to that status, which Pace-O-Matic is fighting to defend. The company argues they differ from slot machines because they require an element of skill rather than pure chance to win.
State lawmakers have floated measures to either regulate and tax skill games or ban them outright. As Gov. Josh Shapiro and the General Assembly look to provide new funding for transit, infrastructure and education in the next budget, skill games are likely to be a subject of legislative debate again this year.
A new proposal Friday by state Sen. Gene Yaw (R-Lycoming), whose district includes the largest manufacturer of Pennsylvania skill games, estimates that a regulated and taxed skill games industry could generate $300 million in new revenue annually. That’s about the size of Shapiro’s unfulfilled 2024 budget request for new transit funding.
In the face of a call to ban skill games, Pa.’s biggest player is pushing back hard
Pace-O-Matic, which has said it would welcome regulation, told the Capital-Star in a statement Friday that it is deeply troubled by the charges against Goodling, whom the company dismissed after it became aware of an investigation in late 2023.
“While we are monitoring the situation, law enforcement has assured us that Pace-O-Matic is not involved in or connected with any of the alleged actions or charges facing Mr. Goodling,” a Pace-O-Matic spokesperson said in the statement.
It also said that the company has enhanced and expanded its national compliance department under the leadership of former state police Commissioner Frank Noonan. Noonan has also served as criminal investigations chief in the state attorney general’s office and as an FBI agent for 25 years.
“Mr. Noonan’s experience and reputation are unmatched, and we have tapped into his knowledge and leadership to enhance our compliance program,” the Pace-O-Matic spokesperson said.
Goodling served as supervisor of the Pennsylvania State Police gambling enforcement unit before he retired from law enforcement in 2018. Later that year, he took a job with Pace-O-Matic, one of the companies he had monitored with the state police.
The first public indications of legal jeopardy for Goodling came in January 2024, when the Internal Revenue Service’s Criminal Investigation branch disclosed that it had seized more than $400,000 in cash and accounts belonging to Goodling.
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But according to a presentment handed down by the Fiftieth Statewide Investigating Grand Jury in October, the investigation began in early 2019.
Acting on tips to the FBI and state police about criminal activity in the video gambling industry, a state trooper had the state police fake his retirement papers so that he could go undercover as himself and get a job with Goodling on Pace-O-Matic’s compliance team, where he worked for several years.
In a 2019 state House Gaming Oversight Committee hearing, Goodling testified that Pace-O-Matic has a team of former state troopers and liquor enforcement officers tasked with visiting the company’s clients “to weed out illegal gaming machines that should not be in the marketplace.” The team reports illegal machines to state police and encourages organizations such as fire companies and VFW halls to replace illegal gambling machines with skill games, Goodling testified.
According to the grand jury presentment: During the course of his employment with Pace-O-Matic, the undercover officer learned “Goodling had orchestrated an illegal scam to obtain large sums of money that were derived from the illegal gambling activities of the Deibler Brothers” and other organizations.
While Deibler Brothers had been barred from operating Pace-O-Matic games for contract violations, such as allowing them to be mingled with illegal gambling devices, the company still possessed skill games and wished to obtain more, the undercover trooper testified before the grand jury.
Goodling worked with the undercover trooper to allow other Pace-O-Matic operators to provide the company’s machines to Deibler Brothers, the reports say.
“This led to complaints by other Pace-O-Matic operators, complaints that would then be handled by the very compliance team that Goodling led,” the grand jury report says. “He proceeded to quash those complaints by failing to take action to have the games removed.”
The undercover trooper told the grand jury that Goodling directed him to assist in obtaining “large covert kickbacks” from Arthur Deibler and another amusement company owner in exchange for allowing them to violate Pace-O-Matic’s contracts.
Goodling directed the undercover trooper to create a limited liability company with him to establish a bank account to deposit the large sums of money he anticipated receiving, according to the grand jury.
Beginning in February 2022, according to the grand jury presentment, Arthur Deibler began delivering regular payments of $10,000 in cash to Goodling in exchange for Goodling running interference on the complaints. The owner of the other amusement company delivered cash payments to the undercover trooper, the presentment says.
The money was divided at Goodling’s direction between Goodling and the undercover trooper. The trooper’s share of the cash was counted, documented and placed into evidence, the presentment says. In total, the undercover trooper and Goodling received more than $150,000 from Deibler Brothers, nearly $100,000 from the western Pennsylvania company and more than $300,000 from Pace-O-Matic operators that provided machines to the illegal gambling operations.
In addition to Goodling and Arthur Deibler, his brother Donald Deibler and employee Joel Ney are charged with racketeering and related offenses. Lawyers for Donald Deibler and Ney did not return phone messages Friday. Preliminary hearings for all four defendants are scheduled Jan. 30 before District Judge David Rossi in Schuylkill County.
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