Disney Cast Member Will Go to Prison After Knowingly Risking Guests’ Lives

A former Walt Disney World Resort cast member has been sentenced to three years in federal prison after hacking restaurant menus, altering allergen information, and adding offensive content to Disney materials.

Michael Scheuer, 40, was fired from his role as a menu production manager for Walt Disney World Resort in June 2024. However, he continued to access the third-party menu system Disney used on personal devices for three months, until he was arrested in October 2024. Following an FBI investigation, he pleaded guilty in January to “knowingly transmitting a program, code, or command to a protected computer and intentionally causing damage” and “committing aggravated identity theft.”

On Thursday, ClickOrlando reported that U.S. District Judge Julie S. Sneed had sentenced Scheuer to three years in federal prison. He was also ordered to surrender his computer and pay $687,776.50 in restitution to the victims.

According to the criminal complaint against Scheuer, the former Disney cast member changed fonts, added profanities, and altered allergy information on several menus in retaliation for his firing. Most dangerously, he added “information to some allergen notifications that indicated certain menu items were safe for individuals with peanut allergies, when in fact they could be deadly to those with peanut allergies.”

Scheuer added a swastika to one menu and manipulated the information for several wine regions to be the locations of recent mass shootings. He also launched denial-of-service cyberattacks (DOS) to lock multiple current Disney cast members out of their accounts.

The former cast member visited one of his DOS targets’ homes one night and gave a thumbs-up to their security camera. Walt Disney World Resort provided security to the unnamed employee and put them in a hotel.

Walt Disney World Resort said it caught the manipulated menus before they were shipped to restaurants and took its menu creation program offline for over a week to prevent further attacks. The company claims Scheuer’s actions cost it at least $150,000.

The Walt Disney Company no longer uses the same third-party menu creation system. It’s currently developing a new system and “has moved to a manual menu approval and distribution process.”

When Scheuer was first arrested in October 2024, his attorney told NBC News that the “allegations acknowledge that no one was injured or harmed.” Counsel further claimed that Scheuer “has a disability that he believes impacted his termination from Disney.”

Have you had a positive, memorable experience with a cast member at Magic Kingdom Park, EPCOT, Disney’s Hollywood Studios, or Disney’s Animal Kingdom Theme Park? Share your favorite memories with Inside the Magic in the comments!