Ex-OpenAI Engineer Faces Charges for Secretly Planting Listening Device
A former OpenAI engineer faces up to five years in prison after federal investigators accused him of planting a covert listening device inside the company’s executive boardroom.
Abdulrahman Alfozan, a 35-year-old engineer from Saudi Arabia, appeared before a federal court in San Francisco on Friday to face the charge of unlawful wiretapping.
The investigation began in late September 2025 after security personnel discovered a suspicious recording device hidden behind a television in the leadership conference room.
The conference room regularly hosted high-level discussions concerning confidential technological, commercial, and strategic plans for the artificial intelligence firm. Investigators stated that security cameras captured Alfozan near the room on multiple occasions, including an instance on October 5 when he entered and checked the space behind the television.
The security team subsequently discovered a second recording device inside a bag containing his personal identification documents. The Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested Alfozan on October 9, prompting OpenAI to terminate his employment immediately.
OpenAI stated on the social media platform X that it utilized its own artificial intelligence models to analyze the hardware and determine its origin. The company added that the discovery highlights how AI can assist in addressing sophisticated security threats ranging from internal risks to state-sponsored actors.
The company also reported that it had no indications that the individual accessed model weights, source code, or customer data improperly, or that he exfiltrated such material.
American authorities are currently examining whether the engineer attempted to acquire sensitive information on behalf of a foreign government. Prosecutors noted potential contacts between the accused and a member of the Saudi royal family, though no official directive from the Saudi government has been proven.
Alfozan remains in custody pending a subsequent court hearing scheduled for November 17. If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a fine, alongside potential deportation from the United States.
The defendant denies the allegations and maintains his innocence ahead of the judicial proceedings.