Initially, the poignant tales of woe seemed heartfelt: She'd just lost her father; her best friend had been maimed in a motorcycle wreck.

But the people the former go-go dancer allegedly turned to for help - bar owners - were the very ones Gina Marie Kepler was being paid by the Pennsylvania State Police to regulate.

Kepler, 35, a state liquor enforcement officer for the last nine years, stands accused of a shakedown scheme that a 15-page federal indictment says grew to include seven bar owners across Montgomery and Bucks Counties. The owners say she employed her clout - and her sob stories - to get cash payments totaling $11,000 over two years.

Before her arraignment Oct. 7, Kepler, who denies the accusations, said her attorney, Mara Meehan of the Federal Community Defender Office, had instructed her not to comment.

"But I can say I'm looking forward to the opportunity to tell my side. Just because someone isn't able to talk doesn't mean that they don't want to - or that they've done something wrong," Kepler said.

Orphaned at 13, married at 18, and divorced at 20, Kepler turned to exotic dancing to make ends meet. It was one of several jobs her ex-husband said he had suggested to offset her lavish spending since she hadn't yet gotten her GED.

Staff Sgt. Thomas Scott Kepler, now stationed in Iraq, said last week that he was sad to hear about the allegations. He said he had hoped that his former wife's police position would have changed her habits.

Court records show Gina Kepler has filed for bankruptcy three times since 2004, amassing thousands of dollars in debt from credit cards, utility bills, and unpaid association fees on her Warrington condo.

"Money is like crack to this girl," Thomas Kepler said. "No matter how much she has, she always wants more."

The charges stunned others.

"I was shocked. I think everyone was," said Sharon L. Johnson, Kepler's former boss at Double Visions, which calls itself "an erotic go-go" venue in Horsham.

Johnson described Kepler as "a nice person," who, like many dancers, used Double Visions as "a stepping-stone" to other careers.

"I remember she was really excited about her job with the state police," Johnson said.

But Kepler allegedly strayed from her official duties at the Bureau of Liquor Control Enforcement, which included inspecting businesses that serve alcohol, issuing citations, and ordering closings for state liquor-law violations, according to the state police, the agency that has run the bureau since 1987.

Deets Radcliff, a longtime restaurateur whose bars include Bobby Burger's Tavern in Conshohocken, the Bridgeport Rib House in Bridgeport, and the Perkiomen Cafe in Oaks, said Kepler urged him to buy electronic ID-card scanners in March 2008. He said he had bought three machines for $875 apiece through a county tavern association.

A month later, he said, Kepler asked to borrow one for a day. He hasn't seen it since.

Radcliff said his efforts to reclaim the scanner suggested Kepler was a magnet for catastrophes. He said he had called her periodically and gotten excuses ranging from the death of her father to a girlfriend's terrible motorcycle accident.

"To this day, I still don't know if her father really died. I'd love to know that," said Radcliff, who has testified before a grand jury.

According to the indictment, Kepler immediately sold Radcliff's scanner to the Langhorne Hotel for $950, a price she described as her cost.

"That's unbelievable," Radcliff said upon hearing that information. "She lied to me about it for a year."