Regan J. Goan
On Friday, 11 September 2026, polygraph operator Regan J. Goan was arrested and criminally charged with a series of misdemeanors associated with his work as a polygraph operator for the Cumberland County, Maine Sheriff’s Office.
Portland Press Herald staff writer Emily Allen provides new details about the charges against him in an article titled, “Maine polygraph examiner accused of lying about 7 law enforcement hiring tests.” Excerpt:
A former detective lied about completing polygraph exams for seven new hires before retiring from the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office in 2022, according to court records.
Regan Goan was charged last week with six misdemeanors, including one count of unsworn falsification, one count of violation of the Maine Polygraph Examiner’s Act and four counts of tampering with public records.
Most of the officers identified in a Maine State Police affidavit from Detective Laura Edstrom received their polygraph exams between 2019 and 2021. Goan spent several years after his retirement continuing to perform exams for the sheriff’s office and other agencies, through his company, R J Goan and Associates.
Cumberland County Sheriff Kevin Joyce said there are no plans to retest the employees who still work for his office. He said he was disappointed to learn last year about the allegations against Goan, whom his office still hired as a private polygraph examiner after Goan’s retirement. Joyce said exams conducted out-of-house usually cost between $300 to $450 per test.
“I’m shocked, as I sit here, that this occurred,” Joyce said. “These are typically your seasoned individuals that have some seniority, and they’ve shown that through their investigative skills and their ability to interview people, that they’re the cream of the crop.”
Cumberland County Sheriff Kevin Joyce might be more shocked to learn that polygraph “testing” itself is a thoroughly discredited, century-old, cop-invented pseudoscience. He should scrap it entirely as a hiring requirement.
In Maine, the completion of a polygraph exam is one of several standards outlined by the state criminal justice academy for basic law enforcement certification. Several agencies also require a polygraph exam for new employees.
Goan’s company has served at least 70 agencies throughout New England, including New Hampshire and Vermont, according to the affidavit.
Those 70 agencies may also wish to review whether Goan engaged in the kind of “deceptive practices” that the affidavit alleges in connection with his provision of polygraph services. But more importantly, they, too, should reconsider their reliance on a “test” that is known not to work.
Former Goan employee, Ben Sweeney
The company did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday. No defense attorney was listed in Goan’s criminal file. He is being prosecuted by the district attorney’s office for Cumberland County.
Edstrom wrote that she was assigned to investigate Roan by the Office of the Maine Attorney General last year, after Benjamin Sweeney — another polygraph examiner who worked for Goan at the time — learned that Goan lied about the completion of a polygraph in 2021 for a man who was applying to work as a 911 dispatcher.
Sweeney learned about this while conducting a new polygraph exam on the same man in 2025, Edstrom wrote. The man reportedly told Sweeney that he had “technically” completed a polygraph exam with Goan years ago, “but (Goan) never actually hooked me up to anything.”
Goan also allegedly told the man not to discuss the exam, according to what Sweeney told Edstrom.
Sweeney shared his concerns with the sheriff’s office and attempted to include what the man told him in the new polygraph report, even after Goan urged him not to.
Sweeney, who now operates his own polygraph company, declined to comment on Tuesday, citing confidentiality obligations.
During a nearly two-hour call between the two polygraph examiners — which Sweeney recorded — Goan allegedly complained that Sweeney’s report was “unfair,” that it “makes me look bad.
“I’ve never had issue with my integrity,” Goan said during the call, according to the affidavit. “No one’s ever taken that into question, ever, in 27 years on the job. … I’m the guy driving the bus for integrity. I have a good reputation and I always have.”
Edstrom wrote that Goan denied allegations of wrongdoing in a voluntary interview in September 2025. He said that he had conducted more than 3,000 exams over the years and could not recall the incident that Sweeney had reported.
Edstrom said that she also learned that Goan misrepresented his testing of another police officer, who joined the Southwest Harbor Police Department in 2025 after moving to Maine from another state.
According to Edstrom’s affidavit, Goan had connected the Southwest Harbor police chief with an examiner in the other state whom Goan knew. That examiner conducted a polygraph exam for $450, Edstrom wrote, but the Maine Criminal Justice Academy said it still needed an exam completed by a Maine licensee.
Goan was “apologetic,” Edstrom wrote, “and said they would give her a polygraph at no charge.” That officer later told Edstrom in an interview that Goan did not fully connect her during his exam, despite reporting to the police chief that he had.
Read the rest of the (paywalled) article here.
Ben Sweeney, who was put in the uncomfortable position of having to choose between loyalty to his employer and loyalty to his conscience, is now, according to his LinkedIn profile, employed by polygraph manufacturer Stoelting Co. and is a member of the American Polygraph Association’s board of directors.
AntiPolygraph.org notes that the “Meet the Team” page of RJ Goan & Associates’ website has been scrubbed. Portraits of Goan and Sweeney in this article are from archived copies.