A Saudi National and employee of OpenAI has been arrested for allegedly planting a hidden recording device in an executive conference room at the company's San Francisco offices to covertly record sensitive conversations.
Abdulrahman Alfozan, 35, has been charged with using or endeavoring to use an electronic, mechanical, or other device to intercept oral communications. He was arrested by authorities on October 9, 2026, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) said. Alfozan had been employed at OpenAI since July 2025, working as an engineering lead. He has since been terminated.
According to Alfozan's LinkedIn profile, he graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with a master's in data science in 2025. He was previously employed at Meta as a senior systems engineer and went on to become the founding engineer at Nash.
"Abdulrahman Alfozan allegedly concealed a covert recording device inside his employer's executive conference room to secretly capture sensitive communications about the company's super intelligence technology," Kash Patel, Director of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), said in a statement.
"Protecting American SI [super intelligence] innovation is essential to safeguarding our nation's economic strength and national security, and the FBI views that mission as one of our highest counterintelligence priorities."
According to the complaint, on or around September 30, 2026, OpenAI personnel discovered a surreptitious audio recording device inserted into a USB port on the back of a television in an executive conference room. The device was said to have been concealed in toilet paper and installed sometime around September 28, 2026.
Closed-circuit television (CCTV) footage obtained from within OpenAI's office showed Alfozan appearing near the executive conference room on multiple dates prior to the discovery despite having no authority to access or participate in meetings taking place in the executive conference room.
The room, the complaint added, was reserved for discussions involving "highly confidential technical, commercial, and strategic information, including proprietary research, product plans, and business-development opportunities, as well as nonpublic information about OpenAI's technical progress and strategic decisions, capabilities, priorities, government engagements, and commercial relationships."
Prior to the installation of the recording device, Alfozan is also alleged to have used an unspecified productivity tool to gather details about OpenAI's building addresses, meeting rooms, meeting-room capacities and calendars, "leadership and exec" locations, and external partner meetings.
On top of that, a chatbot account associated with Alfozan's spouse was allegedly used to submit various prompts between September 24 and 30, 2026, related to building, customizing, installing, audio recording, testing, obfuscating, and remote accessing a device. Some of these prompts are listed below -
- Build a continuous audio recorder
- Customize Wi-Fi ... connectivity
- Improve audio and live listening
- Encrypt the SD card
The same chatbot account is also said to have submitted prompts related to the device, including its custom header and unique MAC address, between September 27 and 28, 2026. Then on October 5, 2026, Alfozan entered the executive conference room and appeared to look behind the television into which the device was inserted.
On the same day, Alfozan allegedly left a bag unattended in a different room in an OpenAI building, which contained a second recording device, along with his wallet and ID.
In a statement shared on X, OpenAI said it discovered a sophisticated recording device, and that it used its own artificial intelligence (AI) models to "understand the device and where it had come from," adding it referred the matter to the FBI after discovering an employee had planted it.
It's unclear what made the device "sophisticated," but OpenAI told TechCrunch that it contained "advanced encryption, audio monitoring capabilities, and a mechanism for transferring data designed to evade monitoring."
"At this time, we have no indications of this individual inappropriately accessing or exfiltrating model weights, source code, or customer data," the ChatGPT-maker said. "Our security program is designed to protect against a wide range of threat actors, from insider risks to cybercriminals to nation states, and this case is an example of how AI can help address these sophisticated security threats."
If convicted, Alfozan faces a maximum penalty of 5 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, followed by 3 years of supervised release.
The development comes as OpenAI fired three safety researchers earlier this month after an investigation found they had violated company policies on handling sensitive information.
