OpenAI engineer caught planting covert recording device inside conference room, prosecutors say

A Saudi Arabian man who worked at OpenAI in San Francisco allegedly planted a recording device in an executive office inside the company building. (Justice Department)

A Saudi national has been arrested and charged after allegedly planting a recording device inside an OpenAI office in San Francisco, authorities announced Tuesday.

Abdulrahman Alfozan, 35, was taken into custody last week. Security footage captured Alfozan near the executive conference room multiple times prior to the device’s discovery, despite having no authorization to access the space or attend meetings there, federal prosecutors said.

“FBI and partners arrested this individual after he allegedly concealed a recording device inside his employer’s executive conference room to secretly capture sensitive communications about the company’s super intelligence tech,” FBI Director Kash Patel wrote on X. “Protecting American SI innovation is critically important and FBI views it as one of our highest counterintelligence priorities.”

Alfozan had been employed by OpenAI since July 2025. Around Sept. 30, someone discovered a surreptitious audio recording device inserted into a USB port on the back of a television in an executive conference room inside an OpenAI building in San Francisco, a federal complaint states.

The company later determined that the device, which had been concealed in toilet paper, was installed two days before it was found, and that its contents were encrypted.

According to authorities, a chatbot account linked to Alfozan’s spouse — which shared key identifiers with Alfozan’s own account — submitted prompts between Sept. 24 and Sept. 30 regarding the assembly and deployment of surveillance hardware. The queries sought information on building continuous audio recorders, customizing Wi-Fi connectivity, improving live listening capabilities, encrypting SD cards, and obfuscating remote-access devices. Prompts also included specific technical details, such as the device’s custom header and unique MAC address.

In a statement, OpenAI said it discovered the “sophisticated” recording device and “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.”

“We referred the matter to the FBI, and we’re grateful to the agents and prosecutors who moved quickly to make an arrest,” the company said, adding that it will continue supporting the ongoing investigation. “We take protecting our technology, data, and people seriously, and as a matter of national importance. Our security program is designed to protect against a wide range of threat actors… and this case is an example of how AI can help address these sophisticated security threats.”

OpenAI noted there was no evidence that Alfozan accessed or exfiltrated model weights, source code or customer data.

Covered by: James Cirrone and Louis Casiano