Saudi OpenAI Engineer Charged With Planting Hidden Recording Device in SF Office

Federal prosecutors in San Francisco have charged an OpenAI engineer with using an electronic device to intercept oral communications, after the company said it discovered a hidden recording device in one of its conference rooms. The suspect, Abdulrahman Alfozan, 35, was arrested on Friday, October 9, 2026, and was fired by OpenAI following the discovery, according to the company and federal prosecutors.

What was found, and where

According to court filings described by prosecutors, a device with a microphone and the ability to connect to a camera was found concealed in toilet paper and inserted into a USB port on the back of a television in an executive conference room at an OpenAI office in San Francisco. OpenAI says the device was installed on or about September 28, 2026, and discovered by the company's security team on September 30.

A second, similar device was found on October 5 inside an unattended bag left near a printer in a different part of the building. The bag also contained Alfozan's wallet and identification, prosecutors said. According to investigators, the devices used encryption and included features designed to evade detection of any data they transmitted.

Who is Abdulrahman Alfozan

Alfozan is a Saudi national who has held U.S. permanent-resident status since September 2020. He joined OpenAI in July 2025 as an engineering lead on the company's AI agents platform. Before OpenAI, he was a founding engineer at the startup Nash from 2022 to 2025, a senior systems engineer at Meta from 2017 to 2022, and held earlier roles at Reach Labs, Microsoft, SAP Berlin and Akamai. He holds a master's degree in data science from the University of California, Berkeley.

How investigators say the device was planted

Prosecutors allege that between September 24 and 30, a ChatGPT-linked account registered to Alfozan's spouse but sharing identifiers with his own account was used to ask how to build a continuous audio recorder, enable remote "live listening," encrypt data on an SD card, and manage downloading or deleting recordings. Separately, OpenAI says internal productivity tools linked to Alfozan's own account were used to look up building addresses, meeting-room locations and capacities, calendars, and the whereabouts of company leadership and outside partners.

Closed-circuit camera footage reviewed by investigators reportedly showed Alfozan near the executive conference room on multiple occasions despite lacking authorization to be there, including one instance in which he appeared to look behind the television where a device was later found.

Charges and the court process

Alfozan faces a federal charge of using or attempting to use a device to intercept oral communications, which carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison, a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release. He made an initial federal court appearance on Tuesday, October 13, with a detention hearing scheduled for October 19 before U.S. Magistrate Judge Alex G. Tse in San Francisco.

FBI Director Kash Patel said the alleged scheme was aimed at capturing "sensitive communications about the company's super intelligence technology," and said protecting American AI innovation is essential to the nation's economic strength and national security, calling it one of the FBI's highest counterintelligence priorities.

OpenAI's response

OpenAI said it referred the matter to the FBI and terminated Alfozan's employment. The company stated it currently has "no indications of this individual inappropriately accessing or exfiltrating model weights, source code, or customer data." It is not publicly known whether the recording device captured any communications before it was discovered.

Timeline of the case