OpenAI Saudi-Born Engineer Arrested by FBI for Secretly Installing Recording Device in Executive Conference Room

The U.S. Department of Justice said on Tuesday, local time, that federal agents had arrested Abdulrahman Alfozan, a 35-year-old Saudi-born engineer at OpenAI, on charges of secretly installing recording equipment in an executive conference room at the artificial intelligence company. According to the Justice Department, Alfozan had worked as an OpenAI engineer since July 2025. On September 30, OpenAI discovered the recording device plugged into a USB port behind a television in an executive conference room at its San Francisco office building. The FBI's complaint states that the device, about the size of a USB flash drive, included a microphone, could connect to an external camera, and was concealed inside toilet paper. It is believed to have been installed around September 28, and its internal data was encrypted and could not be read directly. Investigators later found another custom device of the same type in Alfozan's personal bag. In a post on X, OpenAI said it used its internal AI models to identify the person responsible for planting the device and traced where it came from. The company said there was evidence the employee intended to install more recording devices in several sensitive areas of the office to secretly record meetings. "There is currently no indication that this individual improperly accessed or stole model weights, source code, or customer data. The employee has been terminated," the company said. OpenAI referred the case to the FBI, and the investigation is ongoing. FBI Director Kash Patel said in a statement: "Abdulrahman Alfozan is alleged to have hidden secret recording devices in his employer's executive conference room to covertly record sensitive conversations related to the company's superintelligence technology." According to the complaint, for about a month until September 16, Alfozan used an AI office assistant tool to look up conference room schedules and related access permissions. He has held U.S. lawful permanent resident status since September 2020. If convicted, he could face up to five years in prison, a fine of $250,000 (about 1.676 million yuan at the current exchange rate), and three years of supervised release. According to his LinkedIn profile, Alfozan studied at MIT and UC Berkeley and previously worked at Meta and Microsoft. Separately, OpenAI said last Friday that an investigation found three researchers had violated the company's rules on handling sensitive information, and it fired all three. The researchers are Jasmine Wang, Tomek Korbak, and Mikita Balesni. In an open letter, the three described the circumstances of their dismissal and argued that the sudden firings would cause unease among employees and undermine an internal culture in which researchers can raise concerns about safety risks.