US-born White Heterosexual Male Targets Disney World's Food-Allergic Visitors

A former Disney World Resort employee - who is a white heterosexual US-born male - has pleaded guilty to hacking into Disney's computer systems and altering life-saving allergy information from restaurant menus, with the intent to cause large-scale allergy reactions among Disney's visitor population.

Michael Scheuer was fired on June 13, 2024 for his action. He worked as a menu production manager, and his termination was considered "contentious and…not amicable," according to a federal court complaint. Mr. Scheuer is neither an illegal migrant nor an H-1b visa holder immigrant.

Scheuer has pleaded guilty to knowingly transmitting a program, information, code, and command and intentionally causing damage without authorization to a protected computer and aggravated identity theft, according to a Jan. 10 court plea agreement.

White heterosexual US-born male criminal Michael Scheuer

Federal prosecutors said Scheuer, who they called a "threat actor," was responsible for the creation and distribution of all restaurant menus for the company, including the digital menus. Luckily, none of the changes he criminally made to the menus ended up in the hands of visitors, which averted a massive surge in food allergies among the visitor population of Disney World.

"Namely, the 'threat actor' manipulated the allergen information on menus by adding 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," the complaint states. The allergen alterations focused on peanut, tree nut, shellfish and milk allergens, prosecutors said.

He also added notations to menu items indicating they were safe for people with specific allergies, which has potentially fatal consequences depending on the severity of the customers’ allergies, prosecutors said.  In addition, Scheuer added profanity and changed the pricing of some items on the menus. He also changed fonts and caused some pages to be blank. 

Of particular interest was that Scheuer made changes to information about wines to replace geographic regions with the locations of "recent mass shootings," and embedded "a swastika" on menus, which suggests affiliation with the MAGA universe of gun-toting mass murderers and neo-Nazi white Christian supremacist followers of Donald Trump. This unusual "attack" on Disney's visitors by otherwise dumb white supremacists reflects an enhanced sophistication in their criminal activities.