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An ex-Disney World staffer who hacked into the company’s computer system and changed menu allergen warnings has been sentenced to three years in prison.
Michael Scheuer, 40, of Winter Garden, Florida, made some changes that were potentially deadly to people with peanut, tree nut, shellfish and milk allergies, but the menus never reached the restaurants.
Scheuer also changed the location of wine regions on menus to correspond with the locations of recent mass shootings, added a swastika to one menu, embedded a QR code that would take patrons to a website that urged boycotting Israeli companies and locked 14 employees out of their accounts.
He will serve time for knowingly transmitting a program, code, or command to a protected computer and intentionally causing damage and for committing aggravated identity theft, a judge determined on Thursday.
Scheuer has also been ordered to forfeit his computer and pay $687,776 in restitution to the victims of his crimes.
The former “menu production manager” pleaded guilty on January 29.
Court documents show Scheuer conducted a series of computer attacks within Disney’s system following his termination in June for what was described as “misconduct.”
Part of the man’s responsibilities involved publishing menus for Disney’s entire restaurant portfolio. The company flagged him to police as a potential suspect after an internal investigation.
Federal investigators executed a search warrant at Scheuer’s home in September and seized four computers. At the time, he claimed the company wanted to frame him because of the conditions under which he was terminated.
He was arrested the following month. The night before he was placed in custody, he went to the home of a former coworker, walked up to the Ring doorbell camera and gave a thumbs up. Disney later put the employee in a hotel.
The company no longer uses the software the man hacked, according to the Orlando Sentinel.
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