ORLANDO, Fla. – A former Walt Disney World employee is accused of altering allergy information on food menu items after being fired from the company.
The former employee was arrested last week following an investigation by the FBI. His attorney, David Haas, said Thursday that his client intended to plea not guilty after a formal indictment has been filed. In the meantime, he was being held in jail until at least a bond hearing set for next week.
According to the criminal complaint, the former employee was terminated in June from his position as a menu production manager. The complaint described the firing as contentious.
The former employee is accused of entering into Disney’s servers to alter menu items after being terminated. The alleged alterations began with adding profanity and changing prices and fonts, but in its investigation, the FBI found that the attacks escalated to public health and safety threats.
The man is accused of manipulating 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.”
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Disney said Thursday it wasn’t commenting on the case. Disney caught the changes before the menus were shipped to restaurants, including the allergen information, with “potentially fatal consequences depending on the severity of the customers’ allergies,” the complaint said.
Disney was forced to take its menu creation program offline for more than a week, and the company says the attacks cost at least $150,000.
The former Disney worker denied any wrongdoing when FBI agents searched his house last month.
“The criminal allegations acknowledge that no one was injured or harmed by any menu alterations. (My client) has a disability that impacted his employment at Disney. He had a medical event that resulted in him being suspended,” Haas said in a statement to News 6. “Disney then failed to respond to his inquiries about why he was suspended and then his suspension was inexplicably changed to a termination. Disney refused to provide a response as to why he was fired and made no accommodations for him. He subsequently filed an EEOC complaint. I look forward to vigorously presenting my client’s side of the story.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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