Ex-Cortlandt Worker, Business Owner Plead Guilty in Dumping Scheme

A former longtime Town of Cortlandt employee and owner of a prominent Peekskill-based landscaping company pled guilty last week for their involvement in an illegal dumping and bribery scheme at a town facility on Arlo Lane.

Robert Dyckman, 52, former Assistant General Foreman in Cortlandt’s Department of Environmental Service Highway Division, and Glenn Griffin, 55, owner, president and principal of Griffin’s Landscaping Corporation, could each face up to five years in prison when they are scheduled to be sentenced by U.S. District Judge Vincent L. Briccetti on Dec. 5.

As first reported by Examiner Media in Jan. 2021, from 2018 until Feb. 2020, Dyckman allegedly gave Griffin and his employees unauthorized access to land behind the town’s salt dome at the end of Arlo Lane to dump hundreds of large truckloads of unauthorized materials such as thick concrete, cement with rebar, large rocks, and soil from projects outside Cortlandt.

The scheme also involved the submission of fraudulent invoices totaling more than $100,000 for work not performed.

“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,” said Damian Williams, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. “Brazenly, Griffin then billed and received payments from the Town for removing and hauling away the very materials that he had illegally dumped. Today’s pleas are a reminder that this Office will bring to justice any public official or business leader who defrauds the public and causes damage to our environment.”

According to Williams, Dyckman allowed Griffin and his employees access to Arlo Lane on Saturdays or after working hours. To carry out the scheme, Dyckman, a resident of Verplanck, would attempt to clear senior Town of Cortlandt management away from Arlo Lane around the time of the unauthorized dumping.  When Dyckman arranged for a subordinate Cortlandt worker to work overtime when Griffin was dumping unauthorized loads, Dyckman would falsely record the worker’s overtime as having occurred during the week in order to conceal the scheme.

In exchange for access to Arlo Lane, Williams said Griffin paid Dyckman cash bribes.

According to Town Attorney Thomas Wood, town officials first became suspicious of improprieties when another employee was sifting through material that had been unloaded on the site at the end of August in 2019 and it appeared to be more than was anticipated. Surveillance video allegedly showed trucks from Griffin’s Landscaping Corporation, and other unmarked vehicles, entering the property and dumping building and other material from non-town contracted projects.

The video footage, according to Wood, also allegedly showed Dyckman being present when Griffin trucks were there. Wood said Dyckman would sometimes leave the gate to the site unlocked or arrive on weekends with his own vehicle to oversee the illegal activity.

Wood said town officials later discovered improperly billed invoices for repairs to approximately 100 catch basins throughout town that were submitted by Griffin’s and signed off by Dyckman. Most of the repairs, according to Wood, were not done.

“The only way this worked is because there was someone on the inside,” Wood told Examiner Media in 2021. “There was someone in management.”

Cortlandt officials had estimated it would cost between $600,000 to $1.5 million to remove the materials dumped on the Arlo Lane site.

As part of their Aug. 26 plea, Griffin and Dyckman agreed to pay the Town of Cortlandt and the Westchester Land Trust, a non-profit organization which owns damaged wetlands abutting the Arlo Lane property, a total of $2.4 million to remediate and restore the property.

“The Town of Cortlandt is grateful to the FBI, Westchester County Police Dept and the United States Attorney’s Office for successfully prosecuting these two offenders,” said Cortlandt Supervisor Dr. Richard Becker. “The $2 million settlement will be split between the Town of Cortlandt and the Westchester County Land Trust. It is fortunate that the Town of Cortlandt had installed security cameras at the involved sites, allowing these crimes to be videotaped. We will continue to closely monitor all of our facilities to ensure compliance, public safety, as well as trust.”

Dyckman was employed for 28 years in Cortlandt before submitting a letter of resignation on Jan. 12, 2021 that was accepted by the Town Board. His resignation as Assistant General Foreman, a position he held since July 2012, was effective as of Oct. 22, 2019, which was about two months after town officials discovered the suspicious activity. In his resignation letter, Dyckman waived and renounced any claim to retiree health care benefits that he may have been eligible to receive.

Meanwhile, Griffin, a Walter Panas High School graduate who lives in Cortlandt, also pled guilty in a separate bid-rigging scheme.

According to Williams, between 2015 and 2018, Griffin defrauded the Village of Croton-on-Hudson for work on its schools, and the hamlet of Verplanck for work at its fire department.

Williams stated Griffin made “sham, non-competitive, and inflated bids” on behalf of entities that Griffin did not work for or have authorization to submit bids on behalf of, so that Griffin would be the low bidder in a pool of purportedly competitive bids and receive public money for work on the projects.

Based on the bids, Griffin, who also owns Hilltop Nursery & Garden Center in Croton, was awarded contracts with a combined value exceeding $133,000.

Griffin pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit bribery and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Dyckman pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud.