An OpenAI engineer is in federal custody after prosecutors say he hid an audio recorder in an executive conference room at the company's San Francisco headquarters. Abdulrahman Alfozan, 35, a Saudi national who joined OpenAI in July 2025, was arrested Friday and charged with using or attempting to use a device to intercept oral communications. He made his first court appearance Tuesday.
The complaint reads like a spy novel. OpenAI staff found the recorder on September 30, plugged into a USB port on the back of a TV and wrapped in toilet paper, with its contents encrypted. The company thinks it went in around September 28. Prosecutors say surveillance footage put Alfozan near the room several times even though he wasn't authorized to enter it, and that a chatbot account tied to his spouse (sharing identifiers with his own) asked how to "build a continuous audio recorder" and "encrypt the SD card." On September 27 and 28, that account allegedly asked about the exact device by its MAC address. On October 5, he went back in and appeared to look behind the TV. That same day, security opened a bag he'd left unattended and found his wallet, his ID and a second recorder.
OpenAI is leaning hard on the fact that its own models helped crack the case. In a post on X, it said it "used our models to understand the device and where it had come from." That's convenient marketing. The more telling detail is that OpenAI has a technical surveillance countermeasures team sweeping its meeting rooms at all, and that those rooms host talks on research, product plans and government work.
The company says it has no sign that model weights, source code or customer data were touched. It gradually cut his access after finding the device, then fired him Friday, timed with the arrest. U.S. Attorney Craig Missakian called it "a matter of national security."
If convicted, Alfozan faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. A detention hearing is set for October 19.
— via The San Francisco Standard.