File photo: Guests dine at the Great Maple restaurant at the Pixar Plaza Hotel at Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California.
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predecessor disney An employee has agreed to plead guilty in a federal criminal case accused of hacking the company’s restaurant menu-creation software to falsely indicate that certain foods did not contain potentially deadly allergens such as peanuts, court filing Shows on Friday.
Michael Schur The company is also accused of making other changes to Disney restaurant menus, including changing fonts, causing some pages to be blank and changing wine information to replace geographic areas with locations “where recent mass shootings have occurred,” the documents said.
On one occasion, Scheuer added a “swastika” to the menu, according to the plea agreement filed in U.S. District Court in Orlando, Florida. He has agreed to plead guilty to two felonies – computer fraud and aggravated identity theft.
this court watch News sites first reported the plea deal.
The changes he made to allergen information on the menu “primarily address peanut, tree nut, shellfish and milk allergens,” the document said.
“Scheuer added notes to menu items indicating they were safe for people with specific allergies, a change that could have fatal consequences depending on the type and severity of the customer’s allergy,” the document states.
While it is believed “some” modified menus were ultimately printed, “all modified menus are believed to have been identified and quarantined before being shipped” to Disney restaurants.
The plea agreement states that Disney will no longer use the third-party menu creation applications that Scheuer hacked. The company “has moved to a manual ordering approval and distribution process while the new system is developed.”
Scheuer was fired from his position as menu production manager last June.
In August, Scheuer launched a cyberattack “designed to continually target” Disney employees’ corporate online accounts, the plea agreement said.
In the so-called denial-of-service attack, many of the 14 targeted employees had some interaction with Scheuer while he was working at the company.
Federal agents raided Scheuer’s home on Sept. 23, the documents said. The denial-of-service attack stopped minutes before agents first contacted him and was not restarted after his computer was seized, the documents said.
A criminal complaint filed in October accuses him of accessing menu-creation software and making changes to Disney restaurant menus over a three-month period after he was fired.
About a month after the attack, Sauer went to the home of one of the DOS targets, according to the plea agreement. Surveillance footage shows Scheuer parking his car in front of the target’s home at night, approaching the front door, checking the label on the package outside the door, then “giving the camera a thumbs up” before walking back to his car, documents state.
“This incident occurred after Schur was notified earlier that day that federal agents were executing a search warrant on his Google account,” the plea agreement states.
As a result of the incident, Disney provided security for the victim, including moving him from his home to a hotel, the documents state.
Sauer’s attorney, David Haas, told CNBC that his client will plead guilty in the coming weeks.
“Mr. Sauer is prepared to accept responsibility for his actions,” Haas said. “Unfortunately, his mental health issues worsened when Disney fired him after he returned from paternity leave.”
“No one was at risk of injury and he is deeply remorseful for what happened.”
Haas said Scheer was fired for opposing changes to the system for creating menus at the company’s restaurants.
Haas said Sauer will be subject to a restitution order and a fine when he is sentenced. The amount of Disney’s monetary damages, which will affect his recommended prison time frame, has not yet been determined.
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