If you visited the Bressler’s Friendship Fire Company during the first half of 2024 and bought skill game tickets, you had a significantly smaller chance of winning.

That’s because the bartender, Tamas Topos, was redeeming the winning tickets and paying himself out through the bar’s cash. Topos, who told police at the time he had a gambling problem, admitted that amount totaled more than $80,000 in Dauphin County court last week.

Topos, who originally faced a felony count of theft by unlawful taking, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor of the same charge before Dauphin County Judge William Tully.

Tully sentenced Topos to spend five years on probation and pay back $85,000 to the social club.

Topos performed cash counts on his own and covered his tracks by falsifying records to the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board. Topos wrote the club earned $24,000 from 34 small games of chance during June and July, whereas police said the club should have earned around $34,000 from 46 games.

The club didn’t earn a profit from small games of chance under Topos’ management, whereas during a month-long absence, the club earned around $5,000 in profits, police said.

Topos also emerged at the center of a racial discrimination controversy at the social club after the club turned away a Black man who was interested in becoming a member. Topos told him the club wasn’t taking on new members, the investigation found.

The township commissioners voted 3-0 at the time to indefinitely suspend the Friendship Fire Company from service, although the social club continued operating at the time.

As long as the fire company and social club share the same board of directors, exist as one legal entity and receive funding and support from Swatara Township, the panel recommended the fire company remain suspended.

A month after November 2024’s general election, the Dauphin County Commissioners voted to move a polling place from the fire company’s firehouse to a local school. No instances of racial discrimination or voter intimidation at the firehouse had been reported, according to Chris Spackman, who runs the county board of elections.

The Pennsylvania Department of State prefers polling places be hosted in schools because of their central and well-known locations, Spackman said. Dauphin County Commissioner George Hartwick voted against the move, but said he’d support it if the county began uniformly moving polling places to schools.

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