A cybersecurity expert who was convicted last year of trying to extort $1.5 million from a Rye Brook company has been found in civil contempt of court for refusing to return purloined files.
U.S. District Judge Vincent L. Briccetti ordered Vincent Cannady to serve extra prison time until he complies with a restitution order.
“The court and the government have gone to great lengths to enable Cannady’s compliance,” Briccetti states in an April 14 order. “The only impediment to Cannady’s compliance is his own refusal to do so.”
Cannady, of El Dorado Springs, Missouri, worked for a manpower firm that assigned him to work on cybersecurity issues for Kyndryl, a former IBM company that provides internet services.
He was fired in June 2023, according to court records, and days later uploaded more than 800 sensitive Kyndryl files to a cloud account. Then he threatened to disclose information unless Kyndryl paid him a $1.5 million “settlement.”
A federal jury in White Plains convicted Cannady of attempted extortion on Sept. 16, 2025. On Jan. 23, Briccetti sentenced him to 37 months in prison and then two years of supervised release.
Cannady also was ordered to make restitution to Kyndryl by returning, or destroying, all the files he took, under supervision of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the FBI, and if needed, Kyndryl.
Cannady stated at the sentencing that he would comply with the restitution order. All he needed was a computer, internet connection, and a file transfer protocol. The government provided him with a laptop computer, a tech aid, and an attorney to help him.
Briccetti assessed Cannady’s compliance at two court conferences last month. On March 30, he found Cannady in civil contempt of an order, and said he intended to confine him until he “purges the contempt.”
Cannady “has not been reasonably diligent and energetic in attempting to comply,” Briccetti concluded in an April 14 order of civil contempt, and he failed to offer any valid reasons why he should not be held in contempt.
Cannady, 59, was already imprisoned at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. The days he serves on the contempt charge will be counted in addition to the original 37 month prison sentence.
Cannady has appealed his conviction and the contempt order. He claims, in part, that the sanctions are “purely punitive.”
“Civil contempt will not persuade me or coerce me to provide any more information about the files than I already have,” Cannady states in an April 7 letter to Briccetti.
Meanwhile, he has decided that God has given him an opportunity to help people the “system has thrown away,” and he is helping prisoners prepare lawsuits against the Bureau of Prisons.
“You can not coerce someone who welcomes pain as a means to grow and do good,” he said. “Thank you for your ruling of civil contempt’s, it has helped me and others more than you know.”
