Three people associated with a Schuylkill County company that provides amusement machines and other devices to businesses along with a former Pennsylvania State Police officer are facing charges of corruption, bribery, illegal gambling, and money laundering following a Grand Jury investigation.
A recently unsealed investigation conducted by a Grand Jury in Harrisburg revealed that Arthur Deibler, Donald Deibler, and Joel Ney – associates with Deibler Brother Novelty Co. in Hegins Township – and Ricky Goodling, a former State Police officer who specialized in gambling enforcement were allegedly involved in an elaborate scheme to place illegal gambling devices throughout Schuylkill and surrounding counties and hide this activity.
According to the Grand Jury’s findings, the investigation centered on Deibler Brothers, which promotes itself as a provider of ATMs and amusement devices for bars, restaurants, and other businesses. The Grand Jury said at the conclusion of its investigation that Deibler Brothers supplied thousands of illegal gambling devices in Schuylkill, Northumberland, Dauphin, Lycoming, Luzerne, Cumberland, Berks, Northampton, Lehigh, Carbon, Lackawanna, Monroe, Chester, Lancaster, and Perry counties.
The video gambling devices are considered illegal because they are based purely on chance. To be considered a “Skill” game in Pennsylvania, the devices must include a secondary component, based on a player’s memory, which a “vast majority” of the Deibler Brothers machines allegedly did not.
Deibler Brothers allegedly collected more than $1 million in profits from these illegal gambling machines during the course of the Grand Jury’s investigation.
The Grand Jury heard testimony of an undercover State Trooper who said that Deibler Brothers wanted to co-mingle their illegal machines with those of Pace-O-Matic, a supplier of legal Skill machines in Pennsylvania, at local businesses. This was an attempt, the Trooper said, to dupe law enforcement officials and store owners into believing all the machines in an establishment were legal. The Trooper told the Grand Jury that Deibler Brothers even placed banners on their illegal machines to further deceive investigators looking for illegal machines.
The undercover Trooper, working on tips from the FBI and State Police about alleged illegal gambling, took a job at Pace-O-Matic. He said he maintained his actual identity for this undercover operation but State Police faked his retirement. The undercover Trooper got a job at Pace-O-Matic through an acquaintance, Ricky Goodling, who was an actual retired State Police corporal who then began working for Pace-O-Matic in its compliance department, eventually rising to its Director of Compliance.
Goodling previously supervised the State Police Compliance Auditing and Gambling Enforcement unit, starting in 2005 until his retirement in 2018.
While working for Pace-O-Matic, the undercover Trooper says he learned that Goodling was conducting an illegal scheme to collect large sums of money from illegal gambling machines owned by Deibler Brothers and a similar company that operated in western Pennsylvania.
Goodling, the undercover officer said, had the main responsibility with Pace-O-Matic of ensuring that the company’s machines were not co-mingled with competing gaming devices or illegal gambling devices. Doing so would be a violation of the contract between the operator and Pace-O-Matic. He was also tasked with making sure no more than five Pace-O-Matic machines were at any one location and that no Pace-O-Matic operator was permitted to sell or transfer the game terminals or software to any unapproved third party.
Persistent violations of those terms could result in an operator having their rights to operate Pace-O-Matic machines terminated, which Deibler Brothers had done and was banned. But despite that ban, Deibler Brothers still had Pace-O-Matic games and wanted to obtain more of them, the undercover officer told the Grand Jury.
“Goodling then worked with the (undercover trooper) to allow Pace-O-Matic operators to continue to provide Pace-O-Matic games to Deibler Brothers. This led to complaints by other Pace-O-Matic operators, complaints that would then be handled by the very compliance team Goodling led. Goodling would thus have been made aware of all complaints about Pace-O-Matic games that were operated in the same location as illegal video gambling devices. He then proceeded to quash those complaints by failing to take action to have the games removed,” the Grand Jury indictment reads.
The undercover officer then says that Goodling asked him to assist in getting “large covert kickbacks” from Arthur Deibler in exchange for Goodling allow them to violate Pace-O-Matic contracts.
Part of that process involved the undercover officer creating a shell company, Rest and Relaxation LLC, where large sums of money from Deibler Brothers would be deposited. This shell company, the undercover officer said, received tens of thousands of dollars between February 2021 and October 2023.
Then, in February 2022, Arthur Deibler began giving regular $10,000 cash payments to Goodling in exchange for him “running interference on any potential complaints” made against his company which would have gotten in the way of Deibler Brothers co-mingling Pace-O-Matic games with other illegal video gambling devices.
Goodling then allegedly told the undercover officer that all the kickback money they collected from Deibler Brothers and the western PA company were distributed among themselves. The undercover officer told the Grand Jury that the money he received in kickbacks was all placed into evidence. Between the two of them, he said Deibler Brothers paid more than $150,000 in bribe money.
The undercover officer allegedly told Goodling that the money paid by Deibler Brothers all came from illegal gambling devices to which Goodling reportedly said, “he did not care where the money came from and that the worse that could happen was that he could be charged with a misdemeanor” for illegal gambling.
Goodling, of Mechanicsburg, was arraigned before District Magistrate Judge David Rossi on Dec. 5. He’s facing first-degree felony charges of profiting from a criminal enterprise, dealing in proceeds from unlawful activities, commercial bribery, and conspiracy to commit gambling offenses.
Arthur Deibler, of Millersburg, was arraigned along with Donald Deibler, of Pine Grove, and Ney, of Central Square, NY, back on Oct. 28. Those three are facing first-degree felony charges of corrupt organizations, dealing in proceeds of unlawful activities and knowledge that property is the proceeds of illegal activity.
Goodling and Arthur Deibler were released on $250,000 unsecured bail. Donald Deibler and Ney were released on $150,000 unsecured bail. A preliminary hearing for all four is scheduled for Jan. 30, 2025, before Rossi.
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