Saudi OpenAI engineer accused of planting recording device in offices to record top secret meetings

A Saudi national working as an engineer at OpenAI has been arrested for allegedly planting a recording device at the company's executive conference room in an apparent effort to record top secret meetings.

Abdulrahman Alfozan, 35, was taken into custody on Friday and charged with using or attempting to use a device to intercept oral communications, Department of Justice officials announced on Tuesday.

Executives at OpenAI said its technical surveillance countermeasures team found the device during a sweep on September 30, plugged into a USB port on the back of a television in the conference room at one of its San Francisco buildings. 

The company then determined that the device, which had been concealed in toilet paper, was installed around September 28, according to a criminal complaint.

Alfozan had been caught on surveillance footage near the conference room several times before the discovery – even though he was not authorized to enter the room or attend meetings there, prosecutors said. 

Meetings in the room frequently involved confidential technical, commercial and strategic information, including proprietary research, product plans and government engagements, they noted.

It remains unclear why Alfozan allegedly placed the recording device at the AI giant's office, but US Attorney Craig Missakian said federal authorities are treating the incident as 'a matter of national security' amid the United States' AI race with China. 

Before the device was found, Alfozan used a productivity tool to ask about OpenAI's building addresses, meeting rooms, room capacities and calendars, as well as the locations of the company's executives and outside partner meetings, according to the criminal complaint.

A chatbot account linked to Alfozan's wife, which authorities said shared identifiers with his own account, then submitted prompts between September 24 and September 30 about building, installing, obscuring and remotely accessing a recording device, prosecutors allege.

Those queries are said to have included how to 'build a continuous audio recorder' and 'encrypt the SD card.'

Then, on September 27 and 28, the account asked about the specific device that was found – including its unique MAC address, the complaint says.

When OpenAI employees then discovered the device on September 30, they used the company's own AI models to determine what it was and where it came from, the company said in a statement.

Finally, on October 5, Alfozan was caught on surveillance footage entering the conference room, at which point he appeared to look behind the television where the recording device was placed.

That same day, he also allegedly left a bag unattended in a different room at the OpenAI headquarters, and when security personnel opened it, they found Alfozan's wallet and ID, along with a second recording device similar to the first.

Company executives now say they have evidence that Alfozan intended to place other recording devices in sensitive spaces to secretly record even more meetings.

They described the device in a statement as 'sophisticated,' saying it was designed to evade detection with advanced encryption, audio monitoring capabilities and a mechanism for discreetly transferring data.

Alfozan had worked as an engineer for the company's product team, and was first hired in July 2025.

OpenAI said it has since coordinated the timing of Alfozan's termination with the FBI to avoid disrupting the investigation, and he was officially fired on Friday, the same day that he was arrested.

But executives at the company had already started restricting his access to systems and spaces following the discovery of the recording device, then suspended his physical and network access, placed him on leave and secured his company-issued equipment. 

'At this time, we have no indications of this individual inappropriately accessing or exfiltrating model weights, source code, or customer data,' the company noted as it vowed to continue to support federal authorities in their investigation.

It also noted that it treats protecting its technology, data and people 'as a matter of national importance,' and thanked the agents and prosecutors who 'moved quickly to make an arrest.'

Alfozan had earlier been featured in a video touting him as the only Saudi employee at OpenAI.

'Honestly, this one year felt like five years anywhere else,' he said of his experience in the YouTube video.

Prior to joining the artificial intelligence giant, Alfozan was a founding engineer at Nash, an AI infrastructure company for logistics, from 2022 through August 2025, according to his LinkedIn page.

He also worked as a senior systems engineer at Meta from 2017 to 2022.

Alfozan's earlier experiences include a stint as a systems engineer at Reach Labs, a wireless power startup, and internships at Microsoft, SAP in Berlin and Akamai Technologies.

He had obtained his master's degree in data science from UC Berkeley in 2025 and had previously attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Alfozan is now scheduled to appear in court for a detention hearing on October 19. 

If convicted, he faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine followed by three years of supervised release.

In the meantime, FBI Director Kash Patel said protecting America's AI innovation remains one of the bureau's most important counterintelligence priorities. 

'Protecting American SI 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,' he said in a statement, using the acronym for the Trump administration's preferred term of 'Super Intelligence.'

Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton added that 'this serious situation underscores why winning the global super intelligence race is a national security prerogative - and why President Trump's leadership in creating the Super Intelligence force is so important.'