PORTLAND, Maine (WMTW) -- A former Cumberland County sheriff’s deputy is facing criminal charges for allegedly lying about polygraph examinations he conducted. Regan Goan was arrested last week and charged with unsworn falsification, violation of the Maine Polygraph Examiner’s Act, and four counts of tampering with public records. He spent more than 20 years with the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office before leaving to work for the Bridgton Police Department and operate his own company, RJ Goan & Associates, which offers risk management services, including polygraph examinations. Maine law requires applicants to take a polygraph examination to become law enforcement officers. “The main goal of the polygraph is to ascertain and confirm that the applicant is a truthful individual, not a perfect human, but one that does not employ deception when asked the hard questions,” said retired chief Noel March, a law enforcement expert who leads the Maine Community Policing Institute at the University of Maine at Augusta. Goan conducted polygraph examinations for Cumberland County between 2013 and 2021. His company now contracts with more than 70 law enforcement agencies in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. According to court documents, the case began in 2025, after a Cumberland County dispatcher applied for a job as a corrections officer. The county hired RJ Goan & Associates to conduct the applicant’s polygraph examination, which was conducted by Benjamin Sweeney, who was then employed by Goan. According to court documents, the applicant told Sweeney that during his first polygraph examination, when he was hired as a dispatcher in 2021, Goan allegedly allowed him to leave without taking the test because he was nervous. The applicant received notification the next day that he had passed the polygraph examination. “If we can’t trust the person that we’re counting on to tell us of an individual’s truthful or deceptive, then certainly the process lacks all the credibility that it is intended to have,” March said. According to an investigation by the Maine Attorney General’s Office, Goan allegedly lied about conducting polygraph examinations for nine law enforcement officers between 2019 and 2025. That includes every deputy hired by the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office in 2021. One case stemmed from Goan’s work as a contractor. The others allegedly occurred while he was employed by the sheriff’s office. Court records show that during interviews with investigators, one officer recalled that Goan allegedly told him, “I don’t put full-time officers on the machine.” Goan was released on US$250 cash bail and is scheduled to appear in court in late October. He resigned from the Bridgton Police Department in August. By Norah Hogan
