A former Disney employee and father-of-three who hacked into the company’s internal system after being fired and made a number of profane and even “deadly” changes to some of the restaurant menus learned his fate this week,
A judge in Florida sentenced Michael Scheuer, 41, to three years in prison as part of a deal he made with prosecutors last year.
Scheuer had been a Disney employee until June, when he was terminated by the company from his role as “menu production manager” in what he believed was an unfair manner.
Soon after, he allegedly began making changes to the menus in the system.
In some cases he would allegedly add in profanity to some menu items, changing “cheesy grits” to “cheesy s***s” on one menu and “golden tipped asam” to “Golden tipped ass” on another.
He also made some troubling changes by removing mentions of a number of allergens from menu offerings, notably peanuts, tree nuts and shellfish.
Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Sign up for PEOPLE’s free True Crime newsletter for breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases.
Scheuer did this by “adding information to some allergen notifications that indicated certain menu items were safe for individuals with peanut allergies, when in fact they could be deadly to those with peanut allergies,” according to a copy of the federal complaint against him, which was obtained by PEOPLE.
In many of the cases he deleted the mention of the allergen and replaced it on the ingredient list with “milk,” multiple court filings show.
There were also changes to pricing, employees who were locked out of their accounts and a change to the fonts on the system, the complaint says.
Earlier this year Scheuer entered a guilty plea on two counts of fraud: one with computers and one with identification documents.
For that first count, the judge sentenced him to 12 months in prison. For the second, he got 24 months.
Those sentences will be served consecutively and will be followed by three years of supervised release for count one and one year for count two, though the judge ruled those sentences could run concurrent.
He is also ordered to pay $687,786 in restitution to Disney.
PEOPLE spoke with Scheuer’s lawyer David Haas who said: “Mr. Scheuer remains remorseful and apologetic to the victims. 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.”
Read the full article here
