A federal court judge in White Plains is expected to rule any day now whether Peekskill businessman Glenn Griffin can withdraw his guilty plea to charges that could put him in federal prison for up to 10 years.
If allowed to withdraw the plea, the government can add more charges against Griffin, exposing him to several decades in prison if convicted at trial.
Griffin, 55, of Cortlandt Manor, pled guilty on Aug. 26, 2024 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 and co-defendant Robert Dyckman to let him illegally dump construction debris and other material at the town facility at Arlo Lane.
But at that hearing Griffin hesitated under questioning by the federal magistrate taking his plea, saying 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 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.”
Griffin operates Griffins Landscaping out of offices at Lincoln Terrace in Peekskill. Griffin and his related companies own 11 different properties throughout Peekskill.
A stunning reversal, a plea to the judge
Griffin had a dramatic change of heart after that guilty plea. He hired a new attorney, Jeffrey Hoffman, of the Manhattan law firm Windels Marx, and filed court papers asking federal Judge Vincent Briccetti to let him withdraw his guilty plea and go to trial on the charges. He claims he did not receive adequate legal counsel from his previous attorney.
At a Dec. 5, 2024 all-day hearing in White Plains in front of Judge Briccetti, Griffin took the stand and explained his actions on the day of the guilty plea Aug. 26.
Griffin told Judge Briccetti, “about four or five days before the plea [Aug. 26], I asked Stephen [his original attorney] to postpone the plea. He said he would,” Griffin said in his Dec. 5 testimony.
Griffin claims that he then got a call on Aug. 25 saying that if he didn’t go to court the next day and plead guilty, even more charges would be lodged against him. He went to White Plains that morning and called his attorney from his car outside. “… I told him, I’m not coming in, and I had to get dressed in my car outside the street.”
Griffin told Judge Briccetti he now regrets his guilty plea. “Your Honor, I was confused. I did say it [plead guilty] but I really didn’t understand what was going on. I was mad. I was confused. I wasn’t thinking straight.”
According to court papers the government filed opposing Griffin’s withdrawal of his plea, he faced 62 years imprisonment if all the original six charges had been pursued instead of just the two charges the government agreed to allow him to plead guilty to.
In the Aug. 26 plea deal, Griffin and Dyckman agreed to pay the Town of Cortlandt and the Westchester Land Trust, owner of the damaged wetlands abutting the Arlo Lane property, a total of $2.4 million to remediate and restore their property, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office.
However, in his Dec. 5 testimony, Griffin denied any responsibility for damaging the wetlands. “What’s accurate is, number one, I did not fill in the wetlands, and I’m not responsible for one iota in the Westchester Land Trust. It never happened. I couldn’t get there and I did not do it. We tried to convey that to [the assistant U.S. attorney] and he did not want to hear it.”
Waiting on a ruling
Judge Briccetti said in a court filing that he would rule on whether Griffin can withdraw his plea by Feb. 19. However, a hearing scheduled for that day was postponed. It was not clear at press time when the judge might hand down a decision.
Griffin’s new attorney Hoffman told the Peekskill Herald in an email that he and Griffin are waiting for the court’s decision on their motion to withdraw his guilty plea.
In court papers filed Nov. 21 asking to withdraw his guilty plea, and in his testimony at the Dec. 5 hearing, Griffin claims 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,’” Griffin said in November.
However, 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.”
In addition to Griffins Landscaping, 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.
He has won significant bids in New York City for landscaping work in New York City over the years. According to documents supplied to the Herald, Griffins Landscaping was the apparent low bidder on three separate jobs in New York City in 2024. Two of them were for street tree planting in the Bronx (low bids of $5.9 million and $5.5 million) and another in Queens ($6 million). The next lowest bidder on the two Bronx jobs was JR Cruz Corp., a company that uses union labor.
The current federal charges that Griffin faces were filed against him personally and not his company.
A press spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York did not return an email requesting comment.
