Fired Disney employee gets 3 years in prison for hacking and changing menus

A former Disney employee who hacked into the company’s servers to alter its restaurant menus, including falsifying allergen information and printing profane language, has been sentenced to three years in prison.

A former Disney employee who hacked into the company’s servers to alter its restaurant menus, including falsifying allergen information and printing profane language, has been sentenced to three years in prison. Michael Scheuer, a Florida resident, was sentenced last week in federal court and ordered to pay nearly $690,000 in restitution, with most of that going to Disney. He pled guilty in January to one count of computer fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft. “Scheuer remains remorseful and apologetic to his former co-workers. We are grateful that the judge heard all of our arguments and mitigation when fashioning a sentence that was half of what the government was seeking,” said David Haas, Scheuer’s lawyer, in a statement to CNN. Scheuer worked as a menu production manager for Disney and was fired last June for misconduct, according to the original complaint. He had access to, and also used, secure internal servers for creating and publishing menus for all of Disney’s restaurants as part of his job at the company. However, Disney identified and removed all altered menus before they were shipped to restaurants. The company didn’t immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment. Scheuer hacked into Disney’s menu creation servers multiple times to manipulate and disrupt the menus, such as changing prices and adding profane language. He then made changes to the menus that “threatened public health and safety,” the complaint said, including altering allergen information to indicate certain menu items with peanuts were peanut-free, posing a fatal risk to individuals with peanut allergies.