In a stunning disclosure, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced Tuesday that it has arrested an OpenAI employee who is a Saudi citizen, charging him with secretly recording conversations in a conference room at the company’s San Francisco offices.
A specialized OpenAI security team—the technical surveillance countermeasures team—first found a recording device on Sept. 30 during a sweep of the conference room, OpenAI told Fortune. The listening device was plugged into a USB port on the back of a television, concealed by a small piece of toilet paper, according to the FBI.
OpenAI contacted the FBI after discovering the listening device, which the company says was sophisticated and designed to evade detection. It had advanced encryption, audio monitoring capabilities, and a mechanism for transferring data designed to evade monitoring.
In that conference room, executives frequently held “discussions of highly confidential technical, commercial, and strategic information,” the FBI said, including with government officials. That includes “proprietary research, product plans, and business-development opportunities, as well as nonpublic information about OpenAI’s technical progress and strategic decisions, capabilities, priorities, government engagements, and commercial relationships.”
The suspect is Abdulrahman Alfozan, 35, a citizen of Saudi Arabia, the FBI said, adding he has been a legal permanent resident of the country since September 2020 and was educated in the U.S. He was an engineering lead, according to his LinkedIn, who worked on OpenAI’s “Agents Platform,” according to his X bio. He formerly worked at Meta for five years, and is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2016) and UC Berkeley (2025). He was arrested three days before he, his spouse and a third unnamed family member were set to depart on a one-way flight to Saudi Arabia via Istanbul.
The FBI did not immediately arrest Alfozan upon learning of the device, nor did OpenAI immediately fire him, both of which eventually happened on Oct. 9. He is currently in federal custody and appeared in federal court today, and will appear again on Oct. 19 for a detention hearing. He faces a maximum sentence of 5 years in prison, plus three years supervised release, if convicted.
Between Sept. 30 and Oct. 9, OpenAI worked with the FBI on the timing of Alfozan’s termination, so as to not disrupt their investigation, the company said. OpenAI said it restricted Alfozan’s access to systems and parts of the office, suspended his network access, placed him on leave, and took his company-issued equipment.
However, there was clearly a continued breakdown in security, as Alfozan was allegedly able to enter the conference room again on Oct. 5. He checked behind the TV for the device, which was no longer there, but was captured on closed-circuit television (CCTV) footage inside OpenAI’s office, according to the FBI. Also “on or about” Oct. 5, Alfozan allegedly left an unattended bag in a different room at OpenAI, which contained his wallet, identification, and another similar recording device. The device pictured in the FBI’s release bears the brand “seeed studio” from seeedstudio.com.
It’s unclear what Alfozan planned to do with the data, and at this time neither OpenAI nor the FBI has found evidence that anything leaked.
A few days before implanting the device, from Sept. 24 to Sept. 30, Alfozan began consulting an unnamed chatbot account associated with his spouse about building, installing, and encrypting audio recordings, among other things, the FBI claimed. Court documents reviewed by Fortune say Alfozan prompted the chatbot on how to create custom MAC addresses, iPhone hotspot profiles, complete live listening sessions and even build a second and third recording device.
He also used a “productivity tool”—presumably internal to OpenAI—to inquire about OpenAI’s “building addresses, meeting rooms, meeting-room capacities and calendars, and locations of ‘leadership and exec’ and external partner meetings, according to the FBI.
“At this time, we have no indications of this individual inappropriately accessing or exfiltrating model weights, source code, or customer data,” OpenAI said in a post on X on Tuesday. “We take protecting our technology, data, and people seriously, and as a matter of national importance.” However, the investigation remains ongoing.
OpenAI is using the event to showcase how its technology can help combat these types of threats. The company said it used its models “to understand the device” and figure out which employee had planted it.
FBI Director Kash Patel called the incident a matter of national security. “Protecting American SI [Super Intelligence] is essential to safeguarding our nation’s economic strength and national security, and the FBI views that mission as one of our highest counterintelligence priorities,” he said. It was not immediately possible to reach Alfozan.
Timeline of alleged events, as disclosed by the FBI and OpenAI:
- Sept. 24: Alfozan allegedly begins consulting an unnamed chatbot about building, installing, and encrypting audio recordings, among other things
- Sept. 28: Alfozan allegedly plants the device in the conference room
- Sept. 30: OpenAI finds the device, informs the FBI
- Oct. 5: Alfozan allegedly enters the conference room to check the device behind the television, leaves unattended bag with another recording device in another room
- Oct. 6: Alfozan picks up his bag and complains that a credit card, about $500 in cash, AirPods, headphones, sunglasses and a powerbank were missing—but didn’t mention the secondary recording device
- Oct. 9: FBI arrests Alfozan, OpenAI terminates him
- Oct. 13: FBI and OpenAI announce the arrest
- Oct 19: Alfozan will appear again in federal court