A former Walt Disney World employee has pled guilty to charges stemming from an incident in which he hacked into the company's menu system, potentially endangering guests with allergies, per court records. Michael Scheurer, a former menu production manager, admitted to unauthorized computer access and aggravated identity theft following his contentious June firing, according to a report by FOX 35 Orlando.
The damaging changes orchestrated by Scheurer, who held the responsibility for all restaurant menus at the resort, included manipulating allergen information, which suggested that certain items were safe for those with peanut allergies when they were not; not a single altered menu made it to print or digital publication, however, Disney claimed the incident cost the company over $150,000, as reported by ClickOrlando.
Scheurer's actions are also said to have included injecting profanity into menus, altering item prices, and initiating multiple login requests to obstruct employee access, a technique akin to a denial-of-service attack. The former employee denied all wrongdoing when FBI agents searched his residence. Yet, he opted for a guilty plea before formal sentencing, which has not yet been scheduled, "The criminal allegations acknowledge that no one was injured or harmed by any menu alterations. (My client) has a disability that impacted his employment at Disney. He had a medical event that resulted in him being suspended," Scheurer's attorney, David Haas, conveyed in a statement cited by ClickOrlando.
Scheurer is now facing significant penalties, with the potential of up to 10 years of imprisonment, a $250,000 fine, three years of supervised release, and additional assessments for the unauthorized computer access charge, while the aggravated identity theft could add a mandatory two-year consecutive prison term to his sentence, a $250,000 fine and another year of supervised release as FOX 35 Orlando detailed.
