Former president of Petersburg landfill owner pleads guilty to $8.8 million in fraud charges

RICHMOND — The former president and COO of a Petersburg trash-collection company is facing prison time following a guilty plea Monday in a Richmond federal courtroom to charges that he and a co-conspirator tried to defraud private lenders and banks out of more than $8.8 million.

Robert Wayne Guidry, 54, of Prince George County, was convicted of one count each of tax fraud, and wire and bank fraud. Guidry will be sentenced Sept. 7. .

U.S. District Judge David Novak accepted Guidry's plea and released him pending the sentence.

According to Eastern District of Virginia Court records, Guidry and Christopher W. Elko sold ownership interests in Container First Services Inc., a company they developed with six other partners that has since been sold to Meridian Waste. The records indicate they also obtained loans under false pretenses and embezzled money from Meridian Waste to make repayments.

"As part of the conspiracy, Guidry solicited and induced individuals to lend him money under false pretenses, claiming that the loans would be used for investment purposes — when, in fact, Guidry actually used the money to pay for personal expenses or to repay other lenders," a court statement said..

To cover up their actions, the court said, Guidry and Elko embezzled money from Meridian to repay the loans.

"For instance, the conspirators diverted customer payments owed to their employer to a bank account controlled by the conspirators, and fabricated payables to their employers’ vendors and others, depositing the payments into bank accounts they controlled," the court said.

Elko, 51, of Petersburg, was the former finance director for CFS and later Meridian. He pleaded guilty last year to similar charges and was sentenced to two three-year terms to be served concurrently. According to federal records, he currently is being held at a medium-security federal prison in Butner, North Carolina and is scheduled to be released in 2024. Once he completes his sentence, Elko must be on supervised release for a year.

The maximum time Guidry faces when he is sentenced in September is 30 years, although actual sentences are typically less than that maximum. According to the court, the judge can take several statutory factors into consideration when making the final call.

CFS and then Meridian operated the Tri-City Regional Landfill in Petersburg, but the state Department of Environmental Quality revoked that permit in 2019 over violations of maintaining sanitary conditions around the landfill. The pungent odor coming from the landfill could be detected for miles around and prompted many complaints from residents both near the landfill and as far west as the city's Pembroke and Kenilworth areas.

Since the closure, Meridian has been hauling waste from its Tri-City area customers to a landfill it owns in Lunenburg County about 60 miles southwest of Petersburg.

Last year, the city of Petersburg supported Meridian in a request to allow the landfill to reopen to accept debris from the dilapidated site of the former Ramada Inn hotel on East Washington Street.

A message left with Meridian management seeking comment on the Guidry plea has not yet been returned.

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Bill Atkinson (he/him/his) is an award-winning journalist and daily news coach for USA TODAY' Network's Atlantic Region which includes Virginia. He is based in Petersburg, Virginia. Reach him at batkinson@progress-index.com.

This article originally appeared on The Progress-Index: Virginia landfill president pleads guilty to $8.8 million in fraud