The FBI has arrested an OpenAI engineer accused of planting a hidden recording device inside an executive conference room at the company's San Francisco office — a device prosecutors say was meant to capture sensitive conversations about superintelligence technology. Abdulrahman Alfozan, 35, a Saudi national who joined OpenAI's product team in July 2025, was arrested on October 9 and appeared in federal court in San Francisco on Tuesday.
According to the criminal complaint filed by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California, the thumb-sized device was installed around September 28 and discovered on September 30, plugged into a USB port on the back of a television and concealed in toilet paper. It carried a microphone, could connect to a camera, and the data stored on it was encrypted and inaccessible.
OpenAI says it turned its own technology on the bug. The company said it used its AI models to understand the device and where it had come from, identifying that a specific employee had planted it a few days earlier. It described the device as sophisticated, with advanced encryption, audio monitoring capabilities and a data-transfer mechanism designed to evade monitoring, and said it had evidence Alfozan planned to plant additional devices in other sensitive areas of the building. OpenAI referred the matter to the FBI and fired him.
The complaint says office cameras showed Alfozan near the conference room nearly a dozen times last month even though he had no authority to enter it or attend meetings there, and that he had used a company tool to look up building addresses, meeting rooms, room capacities and calendars. After OpenAI added a camera inside the room, the footage captured him entering and checking behind the television where the device had been installed. On October 5, staff found a bag he had left unattended in another room; inside were his wallet, his identification and a second recording device similar to the first.
FBI Director Kash Patel said the alleged scheme was to "capture sensitive communications about the company's super intelligence technology," and he put the case at the top of the bureau's counterintelligence mission.
"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." — FBI Director Kash Patel
Attorney General Todd Blanche, in a statement on X, said the alleged attempt by a Saudi national to steal sensitive communications from OpenAI was taken extremely seriously, and that theft of intellectual property involving cutting-edge superintelligence technology poses a serious threat to national security.
OpenAI says that, at this time, there are no indications Alfozan inappropriately accessed or exfiltrated model weights, source code or customer data. He is charged with using an electronic device to intercept oral communications, a count that carries up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine if he is convicted. He remains in custody ahead of a detention hearing on October 19. It was not immediately clear whether he has a lawyer who can speak on his behalf, and the Saudi embassy in the United States did not respond to a request for comment.
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