In-N-Out Burger wants a restraining order against an online prankster who walked into two of its restaurants in the San Fernando Valley posing as the company’s CEO, loudly argued with employees and in one instance took a hamburger from a customer, threw it to the ground and stepped on it, claiming it was “garbage.”

The Irvine-based chain’s lawsuit seeking the order was filed Friday, March 23, in Los Angeles Superior Court against Cody Roeder, who posts videos on YouTube as Trollmunchies. Similar prank disruptions featuring Roeder have been recorded at Taco Bell and the Ralphs supermarket chain.

Taco Bell and Ralphs declined to comment on the matter.

Arnie Wensinger, an attorney and executive vice president at In-N-Out Burger, issued a statement that reads in part:

“We have recently seen an increase of visitors to our stores, who are not customers but instead are intentionally disruptive and who then try to promote themselves through social media. These visitors have unfortunately used deceit, fraud, and trespass to their own advantage, and in each instance, they have attempted to humiliate, offend, or otherwise make our customers or associates uncomfortable.”

At press time, there was no response to a request for comment sent to Trollmunchies’ email address.

The lawsuit says Roeder and others with him “caused significant and irreparable harm” to the iconic burger chain with the incidents that took place March 13 at a Van Nuys restaurant and March 14 at a Burbank In-N-Out. It wants the court to impose $1,000 per violation of the order and seeks damages of more than $25,000.

In-N-Out’s attorneys say those who accompanied Roeder and covertly filmed the behavior, “are unjustly profiting from this illegal activity,” and wants the restraining order extended to them as well. It seeks to keep them and Roeder from entering In-N-Out restaurants or harassing its employees and customers.

In Van Nuys, Roeder appeared in business attire and claimed to be the ex-husband of In-N-Out CEO Lynsi Snyder-Ellingson. He claimed he was now the acting CEO of the chain and making a “surprise visit.” He demanded kitchen workers make him a cheeseburger and fries for a “taste test,” then left when he was further challenged.

But, the lawsuit says, he showed up at the Burbank restaurant the next day, making the same claim about being the CEO and demanding at the main register to speak to the manager regarding the “contamination” of the food, then acting confused “that employees had not received a (non-existent) email from him warning them of the urgent health issue,” according to the lawsuit.

When Roeder “failed to incite a reaction from employees, (he) then approached a customer, picked up his burger, and began pulling the patty apart in the middle of the restaurant claiming it was contaminated.”

When the manager promised the customer a new hamburger, Roeder, who had been told to leave, “proceeded to throw the burger on the ground in the middle of the restaurant and step on it, telling the customer it was ‘garbage,’” the lawsuit stated.

The customer, a bearded man wearing cargo shorts, resembles a man who is shown earlier in the video helping Roeder get ready for the first In-N-Out visit in Van Nuys.

When the man appears for the first time, a caption reading BaskTV flashes on the screen, and the man is also shown eating a hamburger in the background of the first visit.

Roeder appears in other BaskTV prank videos on YouTube, pretending to be a Russian mobster named Boris.

A 10-minute video uploaded by Trollmunchies on March 14 shows scenes from both incidents. The video has had nearly 27,000 views, and the channel has 627,460 subscribers.

In-N-Out posted a security alert dated March 14 warning of “a male trying to gain access to a handful of stores’ offices” and claiming to be a company official or a relative of its actual CEO, whose grandfather Harry Snyder founded the company in Baldwin Park in 1948.

A photo of the alert was posted Sunday on Trollmunchies’ official Twitter account with a tweet saying, “I look good hahahaha.”

Recent uploads on the channel depict pranks against Taco Bell and the Ralphs supermarket chain.

In the Taco Bell video, Roeder is shown sitting down with a store manager to discuss her experience when a fan exposes him. He tells the camera he had hoped to go in the kitchen to make tacos.

In the Ralphs video, Roeder warns a customer in a liquor aisle about a listeria outbreak.

Trollmunchie’s Twitter account describes Roeder as a former member of Team Kaliber, a group of competitive “Call of Duty” players.

On March 8, a Trollmunchies video was uploaded in which Roeder claims his channel was suspended by Broadband TV for his defense of Nelk, Toronto-based pranksters whose content was removed from YouTube and who got into trouble for pranking Los Angeles Police officers in 2016.

YouTube and the internet are filled with videos of fast food pranks, often of employees being startled at drive-through windows. Pranks that cause fear or danger to the public are often considered to be crossing the line. A 2015 hoax faking a terrorist attack on a London museum led to prosecution and jail time for the perpetrators.