Federal prosecutors say a 35-year-old OpenAI engineer hid an audio recording device wrapped in toilet paper behind a television in an executive conference room at the company's San Francisco headquarters, then a second device was found in a bag he left unattended days later. Abdulrahman Alfozan, a Saudi national who had worked at OpenAI since July 2025, was arrested last Friday and made his initial appearance in federal court Tuesday on a charge of using or attempting to use a device to intercept oral communications.
OpenAI personnel discovered the first device in the conference room on September 30, and the company later determined it had been installed around September 28, according to the criminal complaint cited by The San Francisco Standard. The device was plugged into a USB port on the back of the TV and its contents were encrypted, the complaint states.
Surveillance footage reportedly showed Alfozan near the room on multiple dates before the device was discovered, even though prosecutors say he was not authorized to enter it. The room was used for meetings that frequently involved confidential technical, commercial, and strategic information, including proprietary research, product plans, and government engagements, according to the complaint.
A Second Device, Days Later
The case didn't end with the first bug. Prosecutors say Alfozan entered the conference room again on October 5 and appeared to look behind the television, then left a bag unattended in a different room that same day. Security personnel searched the bag and found a second recording device similar to the first one, according to the complaint.
An unattended bag found in OpenAI's offices also contained Alfozan's wallet and identification alongside the recording device, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office. The FBI is investigating the case.
AI Chatbot Prompts Allegedly Traced the Plot
Investigators say a chatbot account tied to Alfozan's spouse, which shared identifiers with his own account, submitted prompts between September 24 and September 30 about building, installing, obscuring, and remotely accessing a recording device. According to the federal criminal complaint released Tuesday, that account asked how to “build a continuous audio recorder” and “encrypt the SD card,” and on September 27 and 28 it asked about the specific device later found behind the television, including its unique MAC address, as detailed in a U.S. Department of Justice press release. Prosecutors also say Alfozan separately used a productivity tool before the device's installation to ask about OpenAI building addresses, meeting rooms, room capacities, calendars, leadership locations, and outside partner meetings.
OpenAI says its own employees used the company's AI models to identify the device and trace its origin. The complaint says its contents were encrypted. OpenAI called the case an example of how artificial intelligence can counter security threats, and thanked agents and prosecutors who it said moved quickly to make an arrest.
Officials Frame It as a National Security Matter
U.S. Attorney Craig Missakian said the case was a matter of national security. FBI Director Kash Patel said protecting U.S. AI innovation is among the bureau's highest counterintelligence priorities, while Scott Schelble, special agent in charge of the FBI's San Francisco field office, said the agency is committed to protecting sensitive research and proprietary technology. Those statements echo a broader framing from Justice Department leadership, including Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton, who on Tuesday tied the case to a national strategy for protecting U.S. “super intelligence” technology, according to a Department of Justice statement.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicolas Parker is prosecuting the case with assistance from the National Security Division's Counterintelligence and Export Control Section. Alfozan remains in custody. If convicted, he faces up to five years in prison, a $250,000 fine, and three years of supervised release.
Before the Arrest, a Different Spotlight
Alfozan has been described as OpenAI's only Saudi employee.
OpenAI says it has no indication Alfozan improperly accessed or took model weights, source code, or customer data.
Fits a Pattern in Federal Court
If the Wiretap Act charge against Alfozan sounds like unfamiliar legal territory, California already has its own version: under Penal Code Section 632, the state requires all-party consent to record confidential conversations, making unauthorized recording a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail and fines up to $2,500 per violation, according to Eisner Gorin LLP. The federal charge Alfozan faces carries steeper criminal penalties.
The arrest also lands amid a string of Silicon Valley insider-threat cases moving through San Francisco's federal courthouse. In January, a federal jury convicted former Google engineer Linwei Ding on seven counts of theft of trade secrets for stealing proprietary AI documentation from Google's data centers, a case Hoodline covered in January.
