Michael Scheuer, a former menu production manager at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla., has admitted to altering menus at the park to promote antisemitism and deceive guests with food allergies
Scheuer pleaded guilty to hacking and one count of aggravated identity theft in a plea agreement filed Jan. 10 in Florida federal court. Federal authorities charged the defendant in October with causing the transmission of a program, information, code or command to a protected computer and intentionally causing damage.
The defendant had been fired by Disney for misconduct months earlier, according to the criminal complaint.
Scheuer, who hacked into the company’s menu-creation software, added images including a swastika, changed allergen information to falsely show items were safe for people with allergies and changed the regions of wines to places where mass shootings occurred, according to the plea agreement.
He also altered some menus that included a QR code for a digital version of the menu to send guests to a website promoting the boycott of Israel. While manufacturers printed some menus with falsified QR codes, the change was caught before they were distributed.
Court documents stated that by the end of his hacking campaign, Scheuer had impacted “nearly every menu in the system.”
Scheuer’s attorney told CNBC that his client “has mental-health issues that were exacerbated when Disney fired him upon his return from paternity leave.”
Scheuer faces a minimum two-year sentence and a maximum of 10 years in prison.
