Civil contempt sanctions did not work, so now a cybersecurity expert who is in prison for stealing records from a Rye Brook business has been charged with criminal contempt of court.
A federal grand jury indicted Vincent Cannady, 59, on July 31 for refusing to return or destroy records he took from Kyndryl Holdings Inc.
Cannady, a resident of El Dorado Springs, Missouri who currently resides at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, pleaded not guilty before U.S. Magistrate Judge Judith C. McCarthy in U.S. District Court in White Plains.
Experis Manpower Group hired Cannady in 2022 as a cybersecurity consultant and assigned him to Kyndryl, an internet technology company. After Experis fired him in 2023, he uploaded hundreds of Kyndryl files to his personal cloud account and threatened to release sensitive information, according to court records, unless Experis paid him $535,000 and Kyndryl paid him $1.5 million.
Last year, a federal jury convicted Cannady of attempted extortion. This past January he was sentenced to 37 months in prison and ordered to make restitution to Kyndryl by destroying or returning the stolen files.
When he was sentenced, Cannady said he would comply with the restitution order, but he needed a computer and internet connection. The government provided a laptop computer and assistants to help him.
On March 30, U.S. District Judge Vincent Briccetti ruled that Cannady had not complied with the restitution order and found him in civil contempt of court. He tacked on more prison time, for every day he failed to purge the civil contempt charge.
Cannady vowed not to comply with the orders.
Briccetti concluded on July 16 that after three months of extra prison time, “there is no reasonable likelihood that continued civil confinement will cause Cannady to comply.”
He terminated imprisonment for civil contempt, and ruled that the three months served shall not be counted against the original 37-month prison sentence. And he noted that Cannady is still obligated to satisfy the restitution order as part of the judgement in the attempted extortion case.
The criminal contempt case was assigned to U.S. District Judge Philip M. Halpern. On Aug. 3, Cannady asked that the case be transferred back to Judge Briccetti, because “he is familiar with this case.”
Briccetti noted that judges are randomly assigned, under court rules, and cases are not transferred to another judge at the request of a defendant. He denied the request.
