An OpenAI engineer faces federal charges over a recording device hidden in a company conference room, a case the FBI frames as counterintelligence work.
Abdulrahman Alfozan, a 35-year-old Saudi national, joined OpenAI in July 2025 and has held US permanent residency since September 2020. He was taken into custody on October 9 and appeared in federal court on October 13. The intercept charge could bring five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Court papers allege that around September 28 he placed a Seeed XIAO ESP32-S3 Sense recorder into a USB port on a television inside the executive conference room. Staff found the hardware tucked into toilet paper on September 30. Prosecutors believe it may have been altered so it could not move data to the TV, and its microSD card may have been encrypted; investigators imaged the card but recovered nothing readable.
No camera watched that room when the bug went in; one was installed later. Footage from October 5 purportedly shows Alfozan checking behind the TV. Prosecutors say he had no authority to be there, and that the room hosts secret technical and government meetings.
Prosecutors also cite roughly August 17 through September 16, when he used a productivity agent to ask about building addresses, room capacities and calendars. A chatbot account tied to his spouse, sharing identifiers and IP logs with his, reportedly fielded prompts about modifying a recorder, including a second unit with speech-triggered recording.
Company representatives say he left a bag unattended in the printer room that same day. Staff found a wallet, an ID card and a second Seeed recorder inside. He later reported items missing, including a credit card and about $500. OpenAI saw no sign of model weights, source code or customer data being accessed, and said the employee was fired.
