Prosecutors Allege Saudi OpenAI Engineer Hid Recorder in Executive Conference Room, Booked One-Way Flight Home

Since OpenAI staff found a hidden recording device in an executive conference room on Sept. 30, the case has moved from an internal security scare to a federal prosecution. Court documents unsealed Tuesday, Oct. 13, give the most detailed account so far.

Abdulrahman Alfozan, 35, a Saudi national and U.S. legal permanent resident since 2020, was arrested by the FBI on Oct. 9. He made an initial court appearance this week and has been detained since his arrest. He is charged with one count of using or attempting to use a device to intercept oral communications. The penalty is up to five years in prison, a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release.

Everything below is an allegation. Alfozan has not been convicted.

What the complaint alleges

Alfozan joined OpenAI as an engineer in July 2025. According to the FBI affidavit, he used an internal OpenAI productivity assistant to ask about meeting rooms, including which ones held six or more people and where external partners would typically meet. One prompt quoted in the filing: "how about external partners, where would those usually meet with."

The affidavit says the room he allegedly targeted is used for internal leadership meetings and briefings with government officials and business counterparts. Discussions there "frequently involve discussions of highly confidential technical, commercial, and strategic information." Only executives and their assistants could reserve it. Alfozan had no authorized access.

Between Sept. 24 and Sept. 30, prosecutors say, someone used a ChatGPT account linked to Alfozan's wife to ask how to build a continuous audio recorder. The prompts covered live listening, downloading and deleting recordings, an encrypted SD card and a "power-only" USB output. OpenAI confirmed to Fortune that the chatbot was its own ChatGPT. His wife is not charged.

The FBI says the device was likely planted around Sept. 28, wrapped in toilet paper and plugged into the back of a television. CCTV footage allegedly shows Alfozan near the conference room on multiple days in September; the BBC reports eight separate occasions, while Ars Technica and Fortune report 10 different days. OpenAI found the device on Sept. 30 and determined its contents were encrypted.

On Oct. 5, after OpenAI put a camera in the room, the footage allegedly shows Alfozan entering and looking behind the TV. The same day, the complaint says, an unattended bag in another room held a second, similar device along with his wallet and ID.

The device and what it captured

FBI special agent Lydia Liang, who analyzed the hardware, identified it as a Chinese-made Seeed XIAO ESP32-S3 Sense, an off-the-shelf board. She said it had been customized to obscure anything stored on it.

Whether it recorded anything is unknown. Liang wrote that when OpenAI made a forensic copy of the memory card, "none of the files on it could be recovered or decrypted."

OpenAI said in a post on X that it used its own models to understand the device and trace it to a specific employee. It added: "At this time, we have no indications of this individual inappropriately accessing or exfiltrating model weights, source code, or customer data."

OpenAI did not fire him immediately. It gradually cut off his access to systems while working with the FBI, then timed his firing with the FBI's arrest.

The flight and the Saudi links

In an Oct. 8 filing asking a judge to seal the complaint, the U.S. Attorney's Office in San Francisco said Alfozan had booked one-way tickets for himself, his wife and a third family member. The trip was to run from San Francisco to Saudi Arabia via Istanbul on Oct. 12. Prosecutors said he "has the means, and will have the incentive, to flee the United States sooner if he learns about this case before he is arrested." The judge granted the sealing request.

Alfozan is also listed as a venture partner at Raed Ventures, a Saudi firm. Raed announced on Feb. 8, 2025 that he had joined. It had announced two days earlier that Prince Khalid Bin Bader Al Saud, a member of the ruling family, had become a venture partner. Raed's website lists Alfozan as Engineering Lead at OpenAI. One Raed fund received an investment in December 2024 from Saudi Venture Capital, a subsidiary of SME Bank, which is part of Saudi Arabia's National Development Fund.

A former CIA official with Middle East experience, speaking to CNBC on condition of anonymity, called Raed "basically a state organ" of the Saudi government. That is one unnamed person's characterization, and the criminal complaint does not allege that Raed or its other partners were aware of any recording device. The Financial Times reported that when Saudi tech influencers visited San Francisco in September, Alfozan gave them tours of OpenAI offices.

What the government says and what it has not charged

In its announcement, the FBI alleged that chatbot logs and CCTV footage suggested Alfozan meant to spy on OpenAI and risked leaking trade secrets in a way that threatened national security. FBI Director Kash Patel, citing a Trump administration memo on maintaining America's AI advantage, called such cases "essential to safeguarding our nation's economic strength and national security." He said the FBI views that mission as "one of our highest counterintelligence priorities."

The charge itself is narrower than that rhetoric. It is a wiretap count. Alfozan is not charged with corporate espionage or stealing trade secrets, and the complaint does not allege a foreign tie or say who would have received any recordings. BBC reporting notes it is not yet clear what he planned to do with them.

Alfozan's lawyer, William Pernik, told the BBC that, like countless Americans, his client came to the United States years ago as a young person with a dream. He said the allegations appear wholly out of character and asked everyone to withhold judgment, adding that what has been made public is "an accusation, not a finding of guilt."

Open questions

OpenAI has not said whether its systems flagged his prompts to the internal assistant before the device was found. It has not responded to Fortune's question on that point.

Prosecutors have the device, the chat logs and the video. They have not shown what, if anything, the recorder captured. A detention hearing is scheduled for Oct. 19. Whether the encrypted card can ever be opened, and whether the Justice Department adds charges beyond the single wiretap count, will determine if this stays a bugging case or becomes the espionage case the FBI's statement implies.