Former Disney World Employee Will Serve Three Years in Prison for Several Crimes

A former Walt Disney World Resort cast member has been sentenced to three years in federal prison after committing a series of serious crimes that endangered guest safety and defaced Disney materials. Michael Scheuer, 40, was convicted after hacking restaurant menus, altering allergen information, and adding offensive content in retaliation for his firing.

Scheuer, who was employed as a menu production manager, was dismissed from his role at Walt Disney World Resort in June 2024. However, he continued to access the third-party menu system Disney used from his personal devices for months after his termination. His criminal activities were uncovered in October 2024 when he was arrested by the FBI. In January 2025, Scheuer pleaded guilty to “knowingly transmitting a program, code, or command to a protected computer and intentionally causing damage” and “committing aggravated identity theft.”

On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Julie S. Sneed sentenced Scheuer to three years in federal prison and ordered him to pay $687,776.50 in restitution to the victims of his actions. According to the criminal complaint against him, Scheuer altered several restaurant menus by changing fonts, adding offensive language, and tampering with crucial allergen information. The most concerning of his actions was marking certain menu items as safe for guests with peanut allergies when, in reality, they could have been deadly.

In addition to these serious changes, Scheuer also added a swastika to one of the menus and manipulated wine region information to reference recent mass shootings. He further disrupted operations by launching denial-of-service (DOS) cyberattacks, locking current Disney cast members out of their accounts. Scheuer even visited one of his DOS targets’ homes at night and gave a thumbs-up to their security camera. In response, Disney provided extra security for the affected cast member and arranged for them to stay in a hotel for protection.

Walt Disney World Resort was able to intercept the tampered menus before they were distributed to the restaurants and took immediate action by shutting down its menu creation program for over a week to prevent further attacks. However, the company estimated that the cost of the disruption exceeded $150,000. As a result of the incident, Disney no longer uses the third-party menu system and is now developing a new system with manual approval and distribution processes.

When Scheuer was initially arrested, his attorney told NBC News that “the allegations acknowledge that no one was injured or harmed.” The defense also claimed that Scheuer’s disability may have played a role in his termination from Walt Disney World Resort.

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