Ex-Cortlandt employee and Peekskill landscaper plead guilty in illegal dumping scheme

Cortlandt's former assistant general foreman and the owner of a Peekskill landscaping company pleaded guilty Monday to an illegal dumping scheme and have agreed to pay $2.4 million in restitution.

Over two years, in exchange for cash bribes, Robert Dyckman gave Glenn Griffin access to the town's Environmental Services site on Arlo Lane, where Griffin's Landscaping Corp. would dump unauthorized materials. The company was then paid by the town to remove the material.

In announcing the guilty pleas, U.S. Attorney Damian Williams assailed Dyckman for using "his important public position to enrich himself and damage public lands" by allowing Griffin to dump the harmful material. Griffin turning around and billing the town to remove what he had illegally dumped was "brazen," Williams said.

Griffin also pleaded guilty to a separate bid-rigging scheme that bilked Croton Harmon schools and the Verplanck fire district out of $133,000.

Court documents detail several occasions when Griffin would text Dyckman to see if his company could dump material and Dyckman would facilitate it by making sure nobody was around on Arlo Lane.

“Pop. I no this is annoying. Can we dump a few loads first thing only tmrw??” Griffin texted on Dec. 3, 2018.

"Yes just give me a time and I will pull him out," Dyckman responded.

“We will be there 830-900 .. and I want to take care of u guys I don’t want it for nothing. It’s a big help to me.”

Two weeks earlier, while discussing finances, Dyckman texted an associate "I’m seeing Glenn today I’ll have money for food today.”

In May 2019, after Dyckman directed a worker to be on site one weekend to help Griffin, he logged the worker's overtime hours as occurring on a weekday to hide the illegal dumping.

Griffin submitted fake bids so he got contracts

In the bid rigging scheme, Griffin would submit inflated, non-competitive bids from companies he was not associated with for work at Croton schools and the Verplanck firehouse. That ensured his company would be the low bidder and he got the contracts.

Griffin, 55, of Cortlandt Manor, pleaded guilty before U.S. Magistrate Judge Victoria Reznick to bribery conspiracy and conspiracy to commit wire fraud and faces up to 10 years in prison. Dyckman, 52, of Verplanck, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit mail fraud, punishable by up to five years.

Sentencing was scheduled for Dec. 5.

The restitution will be paid to the town of Cortlandt and the Westchester Land Trust, to cover remediation of the Arlo Lane facility and the land trust's damaged wetlands abutting the facility.

Dyckman, who worked for Cortlandt for 28 years, was fired in the fall of 2019 after town officials reviewed surveillance videos that showed him at the yard when Griffin's trucks were dumping, sometimes on weekends. The matter was referred to the Westchester District Attorney's Office and federal authorities.

Although he was under federal investigation, Dyckman sued to get his job back in early 2021. Both men were arrested on the federal charges in July 2022 and Dyckman's lawsuit was dismissed last year.

This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Ex-Cortlandt employee, Peekskill contractor plead guilty dumping scheme