#123: MrBeast Wants His Privacy.

Welcome to Court Watch #123. We are a niche newsletter for the masses. 

If you like reading about DeepFakes, Lamborghini drama, Black Flag, DNA national security concerns, and woke terrorists, this is the issue for you. But if you’re more of an excessive-footnotes-accidently-legal-strategy-filings-sealing-motions type person, seek professional help but also we got that esoteric legal stuff in this roundup too. But first, a quick update on a national story we broke last year.

Disney Menu Hacker Sentenced

In January, Court Watch reported that Michael Scheuer, a disgruntled former Disney employee, admitted in federal court to hacking into the menu system for restaurants at the entertainment company’s amusement parks. Law enforcement described in court records how Scheuer had manipulated the menus to display false information about allergens included in menu items, changing addresses on menus to locations of mass shootings, and altering QR codes to link to websites criticizing the war in Gaza.

In anticipation of his sentencing this week, Scheuer’s defense attorney and the Assistant U.S. Attorney prosecuting the case filed opposing motions, giving some additional insight into how and why Scheuer targeted Disney’s menus. His defense attorney, David Haas, described Scheuer as someone struggling with a severe mental health crisis at the time of the intrusion into Disney’s network, citing a post he made on Reddit titled “Reaching the end?” 

Haas noted in his sentencing memo some of the ways Scheuer manipulated the menus, such as by changing “cheesy grits” to “cheesy sh##s,” adding milk as an ingredient of Prime Rib,” “shellfish” to “hellfish,” and adding “shellfish/fish” as an ingredient in “Brownie a La Mode.” He asked for Scheuer, a forty-year-old with no criminal history, to receive 30 months in prison.

The government, in turn, asked the judge to sentence Scheuer to seventy months. Prosecutors pushed for two sentencing enhancements, arguing that someone could have possibly had an allergic reaction because of Scheuer’s actions and the special skills he used as a former Disney employee. The judge ultimately sentenced Scheuer to three years in prison.

When asked for comment, Scheuer’s defense attorney, David Haas, told Court Watch, “Mr. Scheuer remains remorseful and apologetic to the victims. We are grateful that the Judge heard all of our arguments and mitigation when fashioning a sentence that was half of what the Government was seeking.”

The Docket Roundup

• Whoopsy daisy.

• The Fourth Circuit got existential.

• Toxic chicken, anyone? A disgruntled employee at a South Carolina chemical company was indicted for allegedly breaking into a poultry facility and altering its distribution system to hazardous levels of chemicals.

• The Justice Department seized the online trading site eWorldTrade and announced an indictment against it for allegedly facilitating the sale of synthetic opioids.

• A sixty-eight-year-old former CIA officer pleaded guilty to acting as an unregistered foreign agent and mishandling classified documents.

• One woman apparently grew so frustrated by the TSA line at the Tampa airport that she reportedly charged at a TSA agent.

• A lawsuit was filed against a Seattle-based clinical lab that works with Planned Parenthood after a reported data breach.

• A fifty-eight-year-old man from Minnesota was charged with calling a Congresswoman’s office phone and leaving a voicemail threatening to kill her.

• The Justice Department says that 27 members and associates of Tren de Aragua face federal RICO charges in the Southern District of New York. According to prosecutors, 21 of the men charged in the case are in custody.

• There’s a CFIUS case over the sale of 23andMe.

• A defense contractor pleaded guilty to concealing $128 million worth of tax revenue out of the more than $350 million he made supplying jet fuel to U.S. personnel in the Middle East.

• Elon Musk’s X/Twitter is suing Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison over the state’s anti-deepfake law.

• May the odds be ever in your favor. 

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• Take note, law review editors, too many footnotes can actually get you into trouble.

• One Utah man is suing President Trump pro se over his recent executive order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” arguing that it violates the Free Exercise and Establishment clauses of the First Amendment. Specifically, the man says he is the founder of “The Black Flag,” a religion granted 501(c)(3) status by the IRS, which has the core beliefs of recognizing systemic racism and emphasizing “the freedom to engage in ‘whatever the f### I feel like doing.’”

• A man is suing Apple for five million dollars, claiming it falsely advertised advancements in its “Siri” feature.

• An agent with the Department of Commerce says a New Jersey lab equipment dealer helped smuggle scientific equipment into Russia.

• The U.S. Courts sent a letter to Congress outlining its request for more funding. The letter singled out defender services and courthouse security as areas of most concern.

• A twenty-five-year-old ex-intelligence analyst for the U.S. Army was sentenced to 7 years in prison after admitting to accepting bribes and conspiring to send defense information to China.

• The Justice Department announced the arrest of a twenty-four-year-old man prosecutors say is a high-ranking member of Tren de Aragua for charges of international drug distribution.

• If you like fancy cars, we have a case for you.

• An Iranian man was indicted for allegedly operating an online trading site, Nemesis Marketplace, that processed 55,000 orders for controlled substances.

• A man in Michigan was arrested for purportedly threatening the employees and shareholders of an energy company, Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and law enforcement.

• The Diocese of Springfield, Illinois, and a Catholic-affiliated pregnancy center are suing Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul over the state’s 2024 Human Rights Act.

• Prosecutors say a self-identified “WOKE Terrorist” who was sentenced in 2020 to 18 months in federal prison for threatening to kill President Trump allegedly did it again, this time by writing a death threat on his car door and driving to a politician’s house. 

• New IG story just dropped: “If you know anyone who work at Truist call center hit me. YK when I post it’s lit!”

• MrBeast wants to seal his documents citing in part, press interest. His lawyer writes, “These and other entries would fuel public speculation about a company that is immensely well-known nationally, and in this District in particular.” Give us a few more years and that line could also describe Court Watch. 

We didn’t seal this week’s newsletter. Though we were about 30 minutes late on publishing it and we neglected to ask a federal judge for an extension. That may trigger a constitutional newsletter crisis or everyone will just move on to the next viral tweet. Who knows. Either way, thanks for reading.