Pennsylvania: Skill Game Maker POM Sues Ex-Compliance Officer, Alleging He Helped Illegal Gambling Machine Rivals

Skill game company POM of Pennsylvania has sued a former compliance officer and ex-state trooper, accusing him of secretly helping two illegal gambling machine operations compete against it while he was supposed to be keeping illegal machines out of its locations.

The 43-page complaint against Ryan Kelley was filed on Oct. 20, 2026, in federal court in Atlanta (case No. 1:26-cv-06353). POM, which is based in Duluth, Georgia, designs and licenses electronic skill game software. The claims are POM’s allegations and have not been tested in court. As of the docket’s last update on Oct. 22, 2026, Kelley had not filed a response.

According to the complaint, Kelley spent many years as a Pennsylvania State Police trooper before POM hired him. He worked as a POM compliance officer from Sept. 27, 2019, to Dec. 31, 2022, and the company says it paid about $300,000 in salary, bonuses, benefits and other amounts. Part of the job was making sure the fraternal lodges, restaurants and other locations that hosted POM machines did not also have illegal gambling machines. For that, he had access to POM’s data on where its machines were.

POM alleges that, unknown to the company, Kelley was helping its competitors instead. Working with Rick Goodling, POM’s then-national compliance director, who also came from the state police, Kelley helped two operations the complaint calls the “Deibler enterprise” and the “Conley enterprise” place illegal gambling machines in Pennsylvania, POM alleges. The company says he used its machine-location data to help them find spots, put their machines in businesses that also had POM machines and quashed complaints about the illegal devices. Kelley and Goodling received “large cash payments on a weekly or monthly basis” from the two operations, the complaint says.

The lawsuit makes a second accusation. POM says Kelley disclosed the contents of “substantially all” the privileged legal communications he took part in, including strategy for litigation against the state police and the commonwealth, to the Pennsylvania State Police and/or the FBI during his employment. POM says it did not authorize those disclosures and that no subpoena or court order required them. It bases that claim on information it says Kelley himself gave POM representatives in late 2025 and early 2026.

The complaint also accuses Kelley of logging into his old POM email account repeatedly in 2023, after he had left, and lists four dates. It says he forwarded emails titled “Skill Games in the News” and “Seize machines” to his personal address, forwarded one titled “Letter from Lou” to an unknown address and archived another titled “Pennsylvania Operator Meeting Agenda.”

POM says it had no reason to suspect any of this until Oct. 29, 2024, when it obtained two Pennsylvania grand jury presentments. One recommended charges against members of the Deibler enterprise and the other against Goodling. The presentments do not name Kelley, according to the complaint. Goodling later pleaded guilty in Cumberland County court to money laundering and in federal court to a tax charge, the Pennsylvania Capital-Star reported in February 2026. The attorney general’s office had alleged in the 2024 presentment that he took more than $500,000 in kickbacks to quash complaints about illegal slot machines, the outlet reported.

POM is suing for breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty and violations of the federal Defend Trade Secrets Act, the federal Stored Communications Act and Georgia’s Computer Systems Protection Act. It wants a court order barring Kelley from using its trade secrets and requiring him to name everyone he shared its information with. It is also seeking damages for lost revenue and investigation costs, repayment of all the salary and benefits it paid him, and punitive damages.

Game Empress earlier covered Pennsylvania’s Oct. 14, 2026, deadline for enforcement against unlicensed skill games.

Featured image: The Richard B. Russell Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse in Atlanta in 2008. The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Atlanta. Photo: DukeArcTerex / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)