Photo: Coolcaesar / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0
A 35-year-old Saudi national who worked as an engineer at OpenAI has been charged in the United States with planting a covert audio recording device in an executive conference room at the company’s San Francisco offices, the Justice Department said on Tuesday.
Abdulrahman Alfozan was arrested on October 9 and made his initial appearance in federal court on October 13. He is accused of using or trying to use an electronic device to intercept oral communications. If convicted, he faces up to five years in prison, a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release.
How the device was found
According to the criminal complaint, OpenAI staff discovered an encrypted audio recorder on or about September 30. Investigators say it had been inserted into a USB port on the back of a television in an executive conference room and concealed with toilet paper, and that it was installed around September 28.
The complaint says meetings in that room routinely covered highly confidential technical, commercial and strategic matters, including proprietary research, product plans, government contacts and OpenAI’s progress on advanced AI systems.
Closed-circuit footage allegedly showed Alfozan near the room on several dates even though he had no authority to attend meetings there. On October 5, prosecutors say, he entered the room and appeared to look behind the television where the device had been placed. The same day, security staff found a second similar recorder in an unattended bag that also contained his wallet and identity documents.
Chatbot queries and OpenAI’s response
Prosecutors allege that before the first device was planted, Alfozan used a workplace productivity tool to ask about OpenAI building addresses, meeting-room calendars and where executives met. A chatbot account linked to his spouse — sharing identifiers with his own account, according to the complaint — submitted prompts between September 24 and September 30 about building, installing and remotely accessing a continuous audio recorder, including Wi-Fi connectivity and encrypting an SD card. Some prompts allegedly referred to the unique MAC address of the device later found in the conference room.
We discovered a sophisticated recording device that was hidden inside one of our offices. We used our models to understand the device and where it had come from, identifying that a specific employee had planted it a few days earlier.
OpenAI statement
OpenAI said it referred the matter to the FBI, fired the employee, and has no indication that model weights, source code or customer data were accessed or taken. The company said its security work covers insider risks as well as cybercrime and nation-state threats.
Why it matters
Alfozan had worked at OpenAI since July 2025. FBI Director Kash Patel framed the case as part of protecting American advanced-AI innovation, calling it a high counterintelligence priority. Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton and Attorney General Todd Blanche issued similar statements, casting the alleged recording as a threat to US intellectual property and national security.
The case lands as governments treat frontier AI firms as strategic assets. OpenAI, best known for ChatGPT, holds sensitive technical and commercial information. A physical bug inside an executive room would bypass many of the digital controls companies rely on.
What happens next
The FBI is investigating. Alfozan remains in federal custody; a detention hearing is scheduled for October 19, according to reports citing court proceedings. Assistant US Attorney Nicolas Parker of the Northern District of California is prosecuting the case with help from the Justice Department’s National Security Division.
Prosecutors have not publicly alleged that Alfozan acted for a foreign government. The complaint focuses on the alleged interception of oral communications. OpenAI has said it will keep cooperating with investigators.
