Disney employee to plead guilty to hiding peanut content in menus through hacking.

• A Disney employee who once worked for the company pleaded guilty in a federal criminal case for hacking into the menu-creation software used in its restaurants.
• A court filing alleges that Michael Scheuer falsely indicated that certain food items did not contain potentially deadly allergens such as peanuts by changing menus.

A court filing on Friday reveals that a former employee of a company pleaded guilty in a federal criminal case for hacking into the menu-creation software and falsely indicating that certain food items did not contain allergens such as peanuts.

The filing accuses Michael Scheuer of making other changes to Disney restaurant menus, such as altering fonts, causing some pages to be blank, and replacing geographic regions with the locations of "recent mass shootings" in information about wines.

According to the plea agreement filed in U.S. District Court in Orlando, Florida, Scheuer admitted to adding "a swastika" to a menu. He has agreed to plead guilty to two felony counts — computer fraud and aggravated identity theft.

The Court Watch news site first reported the plea agreement.

According to the filing, the changes he made to allergen information on menus centered on peanut, tree nut, shellfish, and milk allergens.

The filing stated that Scheuer made notations on menu items to indicate their safety for individuals with specific allergies, which could have resulted in fatal consequences if the customer's allergy was severe or of a type that required immediate medical attention.

Despite the belief that "some numbers" of the modified menus were eventually printed, it is believed that all altered menus were identified and separated before being shipped to Disney restaurants.

Disney has discontinued the use of the third-party menu creation application that Scheuer hacked into and has shifted to a manual menu approval and distribution process while a new system is being developed.

Scheuer was fired as a menu production manager last June.

In August, Disney employees were locked out of their company online accounts due to a cyberattack launched by Scheuer, as stated in the plea agreement.

Several employees who were targeted in a denial-of-service attack had previously interacted with Scheuer while he was employed at the company.

On Sept. 23, federal agents raided Scheuer's residence and seized his computer, but the denial-of-service attacks did not restart after the seizure, the filing stated.

In October, a criminal complaint was filed against him, accusing him of using menu-creation software after being terminated and making changes to Disney restaurant menus over a three-month period.

A month after the raid, Scheuer visited the home of one of the DOS attack targets. The plea agreement stated that Scheuer was seen on security camera footage parking in front of the target's house at night, inspecting the label of a package outside the door, and giving a thumbs up to the camera before returning to his car.

The search warrant on Scheuer's Google account was previously executed by federal agents, and the incident occurred after he received notice of it earlier in the day, according to the plea agreement.

The victim of the incident was removed from his home and placed in a hotel by Disney, according to the filing.

David Haas, Scheuer's lawyer, announced that his client will plead guilty in the upcoming weeks.

"Unfortunately, Mr. Scheuer has mental health issues that were exacerbated when Disney fired him upon his return from paternity leave, and he is not prepared to accept responsibility for his conduct, according to Haas."

"No one was ever injured, and he deeply regrets what occurred."

Scheuer was fired by Haas after objecting to changes in the system for creating menus at the company's restaurants.

The restitution order and fine that Haas said Scheuer will receive upon sentencing will be influenced by the amount of monetary loss Disney has yet to determine.