An OpenAI engineer is charged with hiding a recording device in an executive conference room, and OpenAI says it used its own models to trace it

Federal prosecutors in San Francisco have charged Abdulrahman Alfozan, a 35-year-old Saudi national who had worked at OpenAI as an engineer since July 2025, with using or trying to use a device to intercept oral communications, the Associated Press and BleepingComputer reported. The charge was announced on Tuesday 13 October, after his arrest on 9 October. The Justice Department's own release loaded empty on both tries, so this story rests on the outlets named.

According to the complaint as reported, OpenAI staff found the recorder on 30 September, wrapped in toilet paper and plugged into a USB port on the back of a television in an executive conference room; it had been installed around 28 September. The San Francisco Standard reported that an account linked to his spouse asked a chatbot between 24 and 30 September how to build and hide a recording device. The charge carries up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, the Standard and BleepingComputer reported, and the Standard reported a detention hearing set for 19 October.

OpenAI said “We used our models to understand the device and where it had come from,” and that it had “no indications of this individual inappropriately accessing or exfiltrating model weights”, the AP reported. The company says the employee was fired and the case was referred to the FBI. The charge is an allegation, not a finding of guilt.

• Reported Alfozan was arrested on 9 October and charged over a recording device found on 30 September, BleepingComputer reported. BleepingComputer
• Reported The charge carries up to five years and a $250,000 fine, and a detention hearing is set for 19 October, the San Francisco Standard reported. San Francisco Standard
• Claimed OpenAI says it used its own models to trace the device and has no sign that model weights were taken. Associated Press via KSAT