A Westchester landscaping contractor whose trucks dumped hundreds of loads of unauthorized material at the town highway yard in Cortlandt was sentenced to two years in federal prison for his guilty pleas to bribery and bid-rigging schemes.
More than 100 supporters, mostly Glenn Griffin’s employees clad in orange or yellow Griffin’s Landscaping T-shirts, packed U.S. District Judge Vincent Briccetti’s courtroom Wednesday, June 11, in hopes that the judge would spare the 56-year-old Griffin incarceration.
But Briccetti, while crediting Griffin’s community service and entrepreneurship dating back to his teen years, called his crimes “appalling” and said only a prison term would show the proper respect for the law and deter others from similar misconduct.
Contractor Glenn Griffin conspired with former Cortlandt official
Between 2018 and 2020, Griffin conspired with Robert Dyckman, Cortlandt’s former assistant general foreman, to dump debris at the town’s environmental services yard at Arlo Lane for free, in exchange for cash bribes and other benefits for Dyckman. He also had a contract with the town to remove debris from the yard, including the material his trucks had dumped.
And from 2015 to 2018, Griffin submitted fake bids so that his company would be the low bidder and get contracts totaling $134,000 for work at Croton-Harmon schools and the Verplanck fire district.
Last month, Dyckman was sentenced to one year and one day in prison for his guilty plea to conspiracy to commit mail fraud. Both men were ordered to pay restitution of $2.4 million — $1.2 million each for the town and the Westchester Land Trust, the owner of the land abutting Arlo Lane where wetlands were damaged by the illegally dumped material.
Griffin was also fined $50,000, ordered to forfeit $220,000 and will have three years on supervised release after his prison term.
The sentencing guidelines for Griffin, which Briccetti had to consider but was not bound by, called for a prison term of 37 to 46 months. Assistant U.S. Attorney David Felton asked for the top of the range, saying Griffin initiated the dumping scheme and texts between him and Dyckman showed he knew what they were doing was wrong.
“(The two schemes) were not a one-off temporary lapse in judgement,” Felton said.
Griffin’s supporters said jail time would cost employees their jobs
Griffin, his lawyers and three men who spoke on his behalf asked for no prison time, essentially arguing that his employees would lose their jobs because the companies would have to shut down without Griffin at the helm. He has stepped down from Griffin’s Landscaping to allow the company to continue with lucrative contracts in New York City but subsequently started Hilltop Masonry & Landscaping.
The defendant called his actions “horrific” and “horrible” and he apologized to his family, friends, employees and the court.
“This kills me 24/7 because there’s a good chance innocent people are going to lose their jobs because of me,” he told the judge.
But Briccetti was unmoved, saying the businesses might be harmed but not irreparably, and that Griffin has had three years since his arrest to train others to keep them running.
“If he’s failed to do so that’s really on him” and not the prosecutors or the Court, Briccetti said.
He found it ironic that Griffin had used his businesses to try to get out of a prison term for crimes he used his businesses to commit.
Griffin started business while in high school
Griffin started a lawn-mowing business at the age of 12 and had two employees and 100 mowing jobs by the time he was in 10th grade. The following year he incorporated, sending his employees to work while he was in school and joining them on the job after classes.
He was a hockey player who gave up a full scholarship to Cornell University because he wanted to focus on his business.
The bribery and bid-rigging schemes weren’t his first brushes with the law. In 1998 he was sentenced to probation after pleading guilty to receiving stolen construction equipment. That crime did not factor into the sentencing guidelines for Griffin’s current case because it happened so long ago, but Felton and Briccetti did cite them as among the reasons why a non-custodial sentence now was not appropriate.
Griffin had tried to take back his guilty plea last year but Briccetti rejected that following a hearing in December. The judge stuck with the terms of the plea agreement, particularly the $1.2 million in restitution to Cortlandt, even though a lawyer for the town, Michael Burke, said that the true cost of remediation will be closer to $2.8 million because asbestos was found in the dumped material.
Burke said the town is hoping to recoup the rest from Griffin through litigation.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Landscaper who bribed his way into illegal dumping in Cortlandt gets two years in prison
Reporting by Jonathan Bandler, Rockland/Westchester Journal News / Rockland/Westchester Journal News
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