Saudi national working at OpenAI arrested for bugging executive conference room

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An OpenAI engineer has been arrested after allegedly hiding a recording device in an executive conference room at the company’s San Francisco offices, according to federal prosecutors. OpenAI said it fired the employee and used its AI models to help identify who had planted the device.

Abdulrahman Alfozan, 35, a Saudi Arabian national, was arrested Friday and made his initial appearance in federal court Tuesday, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California. He remains in federal custody.

The complaint alleges that OpenAI employees discovered the recorder on September 30, plugged into a USB port behind a television in an executive conference room. The device was concealed in toilet paper, and its contents were encrypted.

OpenAI determined that it had been installed around September 28. The room was frequently used for discussions involving confidential research, product plans, business strategy, government engagements and commercial relationships, according to prosecutors.

Surveillance footage showed the engineer near the conference room on multiple occasions before the discovery, despite having no authorization to access it or attend meetings there, the complaint alleges. He had worked for OpenAI since July 2025.

Investigators also examined inquiries made through a productivity tool about building addresses, meeting rooms, calendars and the locations of leadership and external partner meetings.

A chatbot account associated with the engineer’s spouse, which shared identifiers with his own account, submitted prompts about building and concealing a continuous audio recorder, adding Wi-Fi connectivity, listening remotely and encrypting its memory card, according to the complaint.

The account also submitted questions containing details specific to the recovered device, including its unique network identifier, on September 27 and 28.

The engineer entered the conference room on October 5 and appeared to look behind the television where the recorder had been installed. That same day, security personnel found an unattended bag containing his wallet, identification and another similar recording device.

A LinkedIn profile located by WBC24 lists Alfozan as an engineering lead at OpenAI and says he previously worked as a senior systems engineer at Meta and a founding engineer at Nash.

“We referred the matter to the FBI, and we’re grateful to the agents and prosecutors who moved quickly to make an arrest,” OpenAI said in a statement. “The FBI’s investigation is ongoing and we will continue to support their work.”

The company said it had no indications that the employee improperly accessed or removed AI model weights, source code or customer data.

The engineer is charged with using or attempting to use a device to intercept oral communications. He faces up to five years in prison, a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release if convicted.