News
Ex-Disney Worker Who Hacked Menus Gets 3 Years in Prison
A former employee of Walt Disney World who hacked into menus used by its restaurants and edited them — changing prices, adding profanity and altering listed allergens — was sentenced to three years in prison by a federal judge in Florida this week.
None of the changes, including falsified information about food allergens that could have been harmful to visitors, ever appeared before the public, according to court records. The menu alterations were caught and court records show that none of the changes ever reached the printing stage.
The former employee, Michael Scheuer of Winter Garden, Fla., was sentenced on Wednesday in federal court in Orlando, Fla., after pleading guilty in January to one count of computer fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft.
Mr. Scheuer, 40, was ordered to pay restitution of about $620,000 to Disney and $70,000 to the unidentified software company that provides Disney with its menu creation program.
While court documents do not mention Disney World, menus that were entered into evidence in Mr. Scheuer’s case are from the hundreds of restaurants at Walt Disney World in Orlando.
Disney World representatives did not respond to messages seeking comment.
In early June 2024, Mr. Scheuer had returned from paternity leave, court documents show. A few days later, he had an argument with a supervisor about menu creation, according to the documents, and he was told that he would be suspended.
Instead, he was fired for unspecified misconduct, the documents state.
An investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation later revealed that, beginning around that time and over approximately the next three months, there were multiple hacks into servers that hosted the menu creation program.
Those changes included price cuts or hikes of a few dollars, profanities and altering allergens in certain items.
On a drink called the “Giddy-Up” — a blend of vodka, lemonade and iced tea — he lowered the price by $2, according to court records, and took two ounces off a 10-ounce filet mignon. In another instance, “shellfish” was changed to “hellfish.”
On a couple of menus, either the prices or the descriptions of the items disappeared.
He changed a wine region — Golden, Colo. — to the location of a mass shooting, Aurora, Colo. He also edited “Infamous Goose” — high-quality imported wine from New Zealand — to “Infamous Moose.”
More crucially, Mr. Scheuer edited certain menu items, falsely showing that they were safe for people with allergies to peanuts, tree nuts, shellfish and milk, according to his plea agreement.
Prosecutors said “the discreet way in which these changes were made was likely by design, specifically to avoid detection.”
But Mr. Scheuer’s lawyer, David Haas, said that his client had only been trying to get the attention of Disney so that it would respond to him.
“He knew the menu changes would be identified in Disney’s extensive menu review process,” Mr. Haas said in a court document.
Disney had indeed noticed, and it had contacted the F.B.I., identifying Mr. Scheuer as a possible suspect. In September, the F.B.I. executed a search warrant at Mr. Scheuer’s home and seized several electronic devices.
The criminal complaint also shows that Mr. Scheuer blocked 14 Disney employees from their company accounts through denial-of-service attacks. Some of the targeted workers were former colleagues involved in his firing, according to court records.
On one occasion, Mr. Scheuer drove to the home of one of the targeted employees shortly before 11 p.m., walked to the front door and gave a thumbs-up to the Ring doorbell camera before leaving, court records show.
Gregory W. Kehoe, the interim U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Florida, said that Mr. Scheuer’s actions were at least partly attributable to a mental health episode. Prosecutors asked for a 70-month sentence.
Mr. Haas said in an interview on Friday that “Mr. Scheuer remains remorseful and apologetic to his former co-workers,” adding that he was grateful to the judge for imposing only a 36-month sentence.
Sheelagh McNeill contributed research.
Her opponent at the Babson fight night was her Harvard teammate Muskaan Sandhu, 18, a freshman, who had sparred before. No one likes getting hit, Ms. Sandhu said, but she liked learning that she could take a punch.
It made her feel she could do anything. “After the fight, I never felt so capable in my life,” she said.
Modern life — lived on screens or amid the constant distraction of screens — can feel isolating. She sees boxing as a way to engage with people. “You feel really human,” she said. “You feel a connection with the person you’re fighting. Like we’re in this together.”
Mr. Lake said he intended for Harvard’s club to join the National Collegiate Boxing Association, a nonprofit that provides structure and safety rules. The N.C.B.A. represents about 840 athletes, an 18 percent increase from a year ago, said the group’s president, George Chamberlain, who coaches the University of Iowa’s boxing club.
The well-attended fight night at Babson, which also included boxers from Brandeis University, reflected the growing interest.
Before it began, a volunteer passed out waiver documents. Most of the boxers immediately flipped to the end and signed. Mr. Jiang, of Harvard, appeared to be the only one who read it.
He was a mixed martial arts fan who resolved to try a combat sport in college. “I like the technique side of it,” Mr. Jiang said of boxing, “the science behind the sport.”
His fight plan, he explained, was to control the action with his jab and occasionally throw the right hand, to maintain good defense and try to tire out his opponent.
It seemed a solid strategy — though, as the heavyweight Mike Tyson famously noted, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.
A Frontier Airlines plane hit a person on the runway of Denver’s international airport during takeoff, sparking an engine fire and forcing passengers to evacuate, authorities said.
The plane, headed to Los Angeles, “reported striking a pedestrian during takeoff” at about 11.19pm on Friday, the Denver airport’s official X account wrote.
Neither the airport nor the airline has disclosed the person’s condition.
“We’re stopping on the runway,” the pilot of the plane involved told the control tower at one point, according to the site ATC.com. “We just hit somebody. We have an engine fire.”
The pilot told the air traffic controller they have “231 souls” on board – and that an “individual was walking across the runway”.
The air traffic controller responded that they were “rolling the trucks now” before the pilot told the tower they “have smoke in the aircraft”.
“We are going to evacuate on the runway,” the pilot added.
Frontier Airlines said in a statement that flight 4345 was the one involved in the collision – and that “smoke was reported in the cabin and the pilots aborted takeoff”. It was not clear whether the smoke was linked to the crash with the person.
The plane, an Airbus A321, “was carrying 224 passengers and seven crew members”, the airline said. “We are investigating this incident and gathering more information in coordination with the airport and other safety authorities.”
Passengers were then evacuated using slides, and the emergency crew bused them to the terminal.
Denver’s airport said the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) had been notified and that runway 17L – where the incident took place – will remain closed while an investigation is conducted.
Friday’s episode at Denver’s airport came one day after a Delta Airline employee died on Thursday night at Orlando’s international airport when a vehicle struck a jet bridge next to an airplane with passengers onboard, as the local news outlet WESH reported.
Meanwhile, on 3 May, a United Airlines plane arriving in Newark, New Jersey, from Venice, Italy, clipped a delivery truck and a light pole, which in turn struck a Jeep. Only the delivery truck driver was injured, but the plane was damaged extensively and the NTSB classified the case as an accident while also opening an investigation.
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