FBI arrested an OpenAI engineer accused of hiding a device to record the company leadership's discussions

Saudi national Abdulrahman Alfozan, an engineer at OpenAI, was arrested on October 9 and federally charged in the United States for allegedly secretly installing a recording device in a conference room used by the company’s leadership in San Francisco, California.

According to federal prosecutors, OpenAI discovered the device on September 30, after it had been installed approximately two days earlier. It was encrypted, wrapped in toilet paper, and inserted into a USB port behind a television in the conference room.

The company, which created the ChatGPT chatbot, alerted the FBI and used its own artificial intelligence models to analyze the device and determine that it had been placed by an employee. OpenAI later announced Alfozan’s dismissal.

Prosecutors allege that the engineer intended to intercept sensitive communications about the company’s superintelligence technology. FBI Director Kash Patel described the act as an attempt to secretly intercept confidential discussions.

OpenAI said there were no indications that the suspect had accessed or unauthorizedly extracted artificial intelligence model parameters, source code, or customer data. Alfozan had worked at the company since July 2025. If convicted, he faces up to five years in prison, a $250,000 fine, and three years of supervised release.