Glenn Griffin, the prominent Peekskill businessman and owner of Griffin’s Landscaping, will face a federal judge in White Plains tomorrow morning, Dec. 5, and ask to withdraw his guilty plea, a plea that could put him in federal prison for ten years.
In a stunning twist to the high-profile bribery and illegal dumping case, Griffin now argues in court papers that the Town of Cortlandt allowed many municipalities and contractors to dump construction debris and other material at their Arlo Lane facility over a long period of years and that the town, not Griffin, is responsible for polluting the surrounding wetlands, leading to several millions of dollars of necessary cleanup costs.
Griffin, 55, of Cortlandt Manor, pled guilty on Aug. 26 to one count of conspiracy to commit bribery and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, each carrying a maximum sentence of five years in prison. He said then that he bribed town employee Robert Dyckman to let him dump at the town facility.
At the time of the guilty plea, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Damian Williams said “Robert Dyckman, a former Town of Cortlandt employee, used his important public position to enrich himself and damage public land and fragile wetlands by allowing Glenn Griffin, a business owner and president, to illegally dump harmful, unauthorized materials on public property.
“Brazenly, Griffin then billed and received payments from the Town for removing and hauling away the very materials that he had illegally dumped.”
Now Griffin alleges there was no reason to bribe Dyckman because Cortlandt allowed many people, including him, to dump at the site.
However Thomas Wood, Cortlandt Town Attorney expects that the U.S. Attorney’s office will prevail in opposing Griffin’s motion to withdraw his guilty plea.
“The town has been in contact with the U.S. Attorney’s office and they have been working with us,” Wood told the Herald. “They have required [the defendants] to make restitution. To set aside a guilty plea is a difficult burden for the defendant so we’re confident that the U.S. Attorney’s office will do everything necessary to keep the plea.”
Not guilty, Griffin to tell judge, retracting guilty plea
At the Aug. 26 hearing Griffin pleaded guilty in federal court in front of a federal magistrate hearing the case. But at that hearing Griffin hesitated under questioning by the judge, saying that he was pleading guilty to resolve the case but expressing reservations about his guilt.
Asked by the judge why he was hesitating before answering her questions and whether he regretted his plea, Griffin responded “I’m not allowed to say anything, Your Honor. If I did it would be held against me. I can’t – it’s too late now, so the answer is no.”
Later in the hearing Griffin told the judge “… you have to just say yes [plead guilty] and plead for mercy.”
Asked by the judge if he participated in an illegal dumping scheme with co-defendant and former Cortlandt town employee Dyckman, Griffin said “No. Your Honor, there was never anything illegal about it because the town – the town uses every drop of material that goes in there [the town dump at Arlo Lane]. They have been doing it for 20 years. They use every drop of material. And what’s in the dump right now is five or seven percent mine and 93 percent other people, and I get blamed for the entire thing.”
Later in the hearing Griffin says he had permission from the town employee who ran the site [not Dyckman] to dump debris at Arlo Lane. The town then screened the material and it was the town that dumped debris into the adjacent wetlands, not Griffin, he alleges. “We have pictures and videos of [town employees] just pushing it right into the wetlands and that all got blamed on me as well.”
Employees claim town allowed the dumping for years
New court exhibits filed in the case include statements from two former town employees who say dumping by many contractors was allowed at Arlo Lane for years.
“William A. Geiler, who was employed by the Town of Cortlandt from 2014-2016, affirmed that he observed ‘numerous contractors’ deposit a wide variety of material at Arlo, including ‘road debris, contents of catch basins, wood, metal, various types of pipes, sludge, millings, and various types of soils,'” Griffin’s new attorney Jeffrey Hoffman states.
“Similarly, Arthur Harkins, who was employed by the Town of Cortlandt from 1995-2022, attested that ‘numerous contractors would dump materials and debris at [Arlo]’ and that he personally observed the presence of materials, ‘such as the contents of catch basins, wood, metal, various types of pipes, and unidentifiable materials’ at Arlo.”
And according to attorney Hoffman, the key witness in the bribery charges against Griffin who testified they saw him give thousands of dollars to co-defendant Dyckman has now recanted their grand jury testimony claiming they were drunk during that testimony. Griffin says he gave Dyckman a few hundred dollars as gifts to a friend, not thousands of dollars in bribes.
Hoffman did not immediately return a call from the Herald asking for comment on the case.
Blames prior attorney for pleading guilty
In court papers, his now attorney Hoffman claims that the Aug. 26 guilty plea was made over Griffin’s objection.
“The combination of undue pressure, misinformation, and Mr. Griffin’s repeated assertions of innocence demonstrates that his plea was neither knowing nor voluntary,” Hoffman states.
In his Nov. 21 statement to the court asking to withdraw his guilty plea, Griffin charges that his previous attorney Stephen McCarthy misled him about the government’s case. “Mr. McCarthy repeatedly assured me that the Government’s case was weak and that it would ‘go away.’ He told me ‘If anything, I will have a misdemeanor like a parking ticket’ and promised ‘Not on my watch – Glenn will not go to jail.'”
McCarthy denied the allegations made by Griffin. “Mr Griffin has decided, for his own purposes, that he wishes to withdraw his guilty plea,” McCarthy told the Herald. “Counsel provided nothing but extraordinarily competent, professional advice for Mr. Griffin when he chose to voluntarily plead guilty back in August.”
Griffin also owns Hilltop Nursery & Garden Center in Croton and Diddell Farms, a 38-acre farm that grows perennials, annuals, and ornamental plants, as well as vegetables and organic blueberries in Wappinger Falls. His companies have held a variety of municipal contracts with the Town of Cortlandt, the Village of Croton, Verplanck and New York City.
In court papers, federal prosecutors asked Federal District Court Judge Vincent Briccetti to sentence Griffin to two and one half years in federal prison followed by three years of supervised release in addition to fines to pay to clean up the wetlands.
The press office at the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan did not respond to a phone call.
Griffin and Dyckman had agreed to pay the Town of Cortlandt and the Westchester Land Trust, a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization which owns damaged wetlands abutting the Town of Cortlandt’s Arlo Lane property, a total of $2.4 million to remediate and restore their property.
However, Griffin now states that Cortlandt is responsible for the damage to the wetlands, not him.
“Considering Mr. Griffin and others personally observed Town of Cortlandt employees improperly depositing materials into the abutting wetlands on a visit to Arlo after Mr. Griffin was indicted (in preparation for trial), the factual record strongly suggests that all blame should be laid at the feet of the Town of Cortlandt,” court papers allege.
So at what was to be a sentencing hearing Dec. 5, Griffin will now try to withdraw his guilty plea and defend himself against the charges instead.
The Herald will update this story as it develops
