Giampiero Cali, of Farmingville, pleads guilty to illegal dumping in Yaphank, DA says

A Farmingville truck driver pleaded guilty Thursday to illegal dumping charges after he admitted to dumping hazardous construction materials at a Yaphank landscaping company.

Giampiero Cali, 48, of Farmingville, who was a principal at Truck Tec Material Corp., was sentenced to 840 hours of “environmentally focused” community service and five years probation.

If Cali does not complete his community service within six months, he could face six months in jail. He was also fined $50,000.

His attorney could not be reached for comment Friday. 

The illegal dumping charges stemmed from demolition materials from a Brooklyn construction site that were dumped April 12 at CMM Landscape Supply in Yaphank, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors said the illegal dumping “was compounded by his effort to defraud CMM staff that his payload consisted of ‘clean fill’ ” or uncontaminated soil.

“Suffolk is no one’s dump site,” Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said. “This is our home. I will continue to devote substantial resources to ensure we have the purest land, air and water, not only for our enjoyment, but for our health and safety.”

Officials with CMM Landscape could not be reached for comment Friday. 

Cali pleaded guilty to two counts of felony endangering the public health and safety and the environment, five counts of felony falsifying business records and two misdemeanor charges of disposing hazardous and solid waste.

His company was also fined $15,000 and his dump truck was forfeited to Suffolk County under a state law that allows asset forfeiture for property used to commit felony environmental crimes.

Cali first told another truck employee in February to pick up the demolition materials in Brooklyn using a commercial dump truck and dump the materials at a residential site in Medford, according to the district attorney’s office.

Prosecutors said the employee told Cali that the materials were not “clean fill,” to which, the employee said, Cali told him to conceal the materials in small pieces to disguise the demolition materials.

The truck was flagged by the New York City Business Integrity Commission as it left Brooklyn, who notified detectives with the Suffolk County District Attorney’s BEAST team, or Biological, Environmental and Animal Safety Team, about possible illegal dumping. The truck was then intercepted just as it was about to dump the illegal materials in Medford, prosecutors said.

The dump truck was impounded and a lab test of the materials found cobalt in the illegal payload, resulting in the company’s $15,000 fine. The company then arranged to dump the hazardous materials at Posillico Materials, a state authorized facility in Holtsville. But prosecutors said Cali instead dumped the materials at CMM in Yaphank.

Investigators said Cali also falsified paperwork and attempted to pass off a separate dump load as the original contaminated materials, which was discovered by a comparative analysis.

 “It was finally compounded by his effort to conceal his unlawful disposal at CMM by creating a 'substitute' payload, which he attempted, but failed, to pass off as the original payload to both environmental crime investigators and Posillico,” prosecutors said.

By John Asbury

john.asbury@newsday.comJohnAsbury

John Asbury is a breaking news and general assignment reporter. He has been with Newsday since 2014 and previously worked at The Press-Enterprise in Riverside, California.