Vernon is definitely in on it himself since Andre is a spineless fukking idiot. He also has no street smarts whatsoever. He's like the odd one out, Cookie barely acknowledges him. His white wife also controls him.
I feel like he's probably working with Baretti (head of that record label that Lucious was originally signed to and wanted to stop him from having Empire go public) to take down Lucious/Empire as a whole and Anika is very weak willed and obviously goes to Baretti and Cookie finds out. Vernon is sneaky. I feel like the only person who would be even close to finding out about his scheming ass ways is Cookie.