An OpenAI engineer based in San Francisco has been charged with trying to secretly record conversations in an executive conference room at the company's offices after federal prosecutors say a hidden audio device was found plugged into a television USB port and wrapped in toilet paper. Abdulrahman Alfozan, 35, a Saudi national, was arrested Oct. 9, made his initial appearance in federal court Tuesday, Oct. 13, and remains in custody pending a detention hearing set for Oct. 19, the U.S. Department of Justice said.
Alfozan is charged with using or endeavoring to use an electronic, mechanical or other 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. A complaint contains only allegations; he is presumed innocent unless proven guilty.
What prosecutors say happened
According to the Justice Department complaint unsealed Tuesday, OpenAI personnel discovered the first device on or about Sept. 30 in an executive conference room inside one of the company's San Francisco buildings. The company concluded it had been installed on or about Sept. 28 and that its contents were encrypted. Meetings in that room often covered highly confidential technical, commercial and strategic topics, including proprietary research, product plans, government engagements and commercial relationships, prosecutors said.
CCTV footage allegedly showed Alfozan near the executive conference room on multiple dates before the discovery, even though he had no authority to attend meetings there. The complaint also says that before Sept. 28 he used a productivity tool to look up building addresses, meeting rooms, calendars and "leadership and exec" locations, and that a chatbot account associated with his spouse submitted prompts about building, customizing, encrypting and remotely accessing continuous audio recorders — including prompts tied to the device's custom header and MAC address around Sept. 27–28.
On or about Oct. 5, prosecutors say, Alfozan entered the conference room and appeared to look behind the television where the device had been. The same day, OpenAI security found an unattended bag containing his wallet and ID plus a second, similar recording device, the complaint alleges.
OpenAI's response and what is still unknown
OpenAI said it terminated Alfozan on Oct. 9 in coordination with the FBI, after gradually restricting his access following the Sept. 30 find. The company said it has "no indications" he improperly accessed or exfiltrated model weights, source code or customer data, and that it used its own AI models to help identify who planted the device. USA TODAY and Newsweek reported the company described the hardware as sophisticated, with encryption and data-transfer features meant to evade monitoring.
Federal officials framed the case as protecting U.S. AI innovation. Prosecutors have not publicly alleged that Alfozan acted for a foreign government, competitor or other third party, and they have not stated a motive or named an intended recipient of any recordings. The FBI is investigating; Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicolas Parker of the Northern District of California is prosecuting the case with help from the National Security Division.
OpenAI's San Francisco footprint is a core part of the Bay Area tech story this fall — see our recent coverage of SF Tech Week AI policy talk and OpenAI's revenue figures.