OpenAI Engineer Charged With Planting Hidden Recording Device in Executive Conference Room

Federal prosecutors have charged an OpenAI engineer with secretly planting a recording device in an executive conference room at the company’s San Francisco offices, in a case U.S. officials are framing as a national security matter tied to the race for advanced artificial intelligence.

Abdulrahman Alfozan, 35, a Saudi national who had worked at OpenAI since July 2025, was arrested on Oct. 9 and made his first appearance in federal court in San Francisco on Tuesday, the Justice Department said. He is charged with using or attempting to use a device to intercept oral communications, an offense that carries up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. He has not entered a plea.

A device hidden in toilet paper

According to the criminal complaint, OpenAI staff found the device on or about Sept. 30 plugged into a USB port on the back of a television in an executive conference room. It had been wrapped in toilet paper, its contents were encrypted, and the company determined it had been installed around Sept. 28.

Prosecutors say security camera footage showed Alfozan near the room on several occasions even though he had no authority to attend meetings there. Before the device appeared, he allegedly used an internal productivity tool to look up building addresses, meeting-room calendars, “leadership and exec” locations and external partner meetings.

The complaint also alleges that a chatbot account linked to Alfozan’s spouse, sharing identifiers with his own account, was used between Sept. 24 and Sept. 30 to ask how to build a continuous audio recorder, configure Wi-Fi connectivity, enable live listening and encrypt an SD card, including prompts referencing the specific device’s hardware address. On Oct. 5, investigators say, he was recorded looking behind the television, and security staff later found a second, similar recording device in a bag he had left unattended.

OpenAI says no data was taken

OpenAI confirmed that it discovered a “sophisticated recording device,” referred the matter to the FBI and fired the employee. The company said it used its own AI models to help identify who planted the device, and that it has “no indications” that he accessed or removed model weights, source code or customer data.

Officials cite ‘super intelligence’ race

Senior officials cast the arrest in geopolitical terms. FBI Director Kash Patel said protecting American AI innovation is “one of our highest counterintelligence priorities,” and Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton said the case underscores why winning the global race toward super intelligence is a national security imperative. The Justice Department said the prosecution supports a presidential memorandum on maintaining U.S. superiority in the technology.

The complaint does not allege that Alfozan acted on behalf of a foreign government, and the Saudi Embassy did not immediately respond to requests for comment from news organizations. The FBI is continuing to investigate.

The case arrives as leading AI developers tighten physical and digital security amid concerns that rival companies and foreign states are seeking access to frontier research.