An OpenAI engineer has been arrested and charged after prosecutors say he hid an audio recording device in an executive conference room at one of the company's San Francisco buildings, the Justice Department announced Tuesday.
Abdulrahman Alfozan, 35, a Saudi national, was arrested Oct. 9 and made his first appearance in federal court in the Northern District of California on Tuesday, the day the complaint against him was unsealed. He is accused of using or trying to use a device to intercept oral communications. If convicted, he faces up to five years in prison, a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release. He remains in federal custody, CNN reported, and is due back in court on Oct. 19 for a detention hearing.
Alfozan's lawyer, William Pernik, told CBS News that his client is presumed innocent. He cautioned against "jumping to conclusions at this very early stage of the case when very little information is known" and against seeking to "politicize" a prosecution based on factors such as nationality.
According to the complaint, OpenAI staff found the device on Sept. 30, wrapped in toilet paper and plugged into a USB port on the back of a television in the conference room. The company determined that it had been installed around Sept. 28 and that its contents were encrypted. Meetings in that room frequently involved proprietary research, product plans and business opportunities, prosecutors said, along with nonpublic information about the company's technical progress, strategy, government engagements and commercial relationships.
Alfozan joined OpenAI in July 2025 and had no authority to enter the conference room or take part in its meetings, the complaint says, yet security camera footage showed him near it on multiple dates before the device was found. Before Sept. 28, prosecutors say, he used a productivity tool to look up the company's building addresses, its meeting rooms and their calendars, the locations of "leadership and exec," and meetings with outside partners.
The complaint also points to a chatbot account associated with his spouse that shared multiple identifiers with his own account. Between Sept. 24 and Sept. 30, that account was used to ask how to build, customize, install, test, conceal and remotely access an audio recording device, including how to make a continuous audio recorder and encrypt its memory card. On Sept. 27 and 28, it asked about the custom header and unique MAC address of the device later found behind the television.
On Oct. 5, the complaint alleges, Alfozan entered the conference room and appeared to look behind the television where the first device had been plugged in. The same day, he left a bag unattended in a different room. OpenAI security staff opened it and found his wallet, his identification and a second recording device similar to the first.
CNN reported that the device turned up during a regular sweep of the room. OpenAI said it then used its own AI tools to work out where the device had come from, identifying the employee who had planted it a few days earlier, and that it referred the matter to the FBI and fired him. The company also said the recorder carried advanced encryption and a data-transfer mechanism designed to evade monitoring, and that it has evidence he intended to place more devices in its offices, according to CNN.
"At this time, we have no indications of this individual inappropriately accessing or exfiltrating model weights, source code, or customer data," the company said in a statement. "We take protecting our technology, data, and people seriously, and as a matter of national importance."
Federal officials described the case in national security terms. FBI Director Kash Patel said Alfozan is accused of concealing the device to secretly capture sensitive communications about the company's superintelligence technology, and that the bureau regards protecting that kind of American innovation as one of its highest counterintelligence priorities. Craig H. Missakian, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California, whose office is prosecuting the case, said protecting the region's technology is "a matter of national security" for his office. The department said the prosecution supports National Security Presidential Memorandum 11, which it described as designed to support American superiority in superintelligence technology, and that a trial attorney from the National Security Division's Counterintelligence and Export Control Section is assisting.
The announcement does not say what Alfozan intended to do with any recordings or whether investigators believe anyone else directed him, and the FBI is still investigating. The charge is an accusation, and he has not been convicted.