OpenAI's logo. The company says it used its own AI models to trace a hidden recording device planted in its San Francisco office. (Wikimedia Commons — public domain, PD-textlogo; trademark of OpenAI)
The FBI has arrested an OpenAI engineer accused of planting a covert listening device inside one of the artificial intelligence company's executive conference rooms, the Justice Department announced Tuesday.
Abdulrahman Alfozan, a 35-year-old Saudi national who joined OpenAI as an engineer in July 2025, was taken into custody on October 9 and appeared in federal court in San Francisco on Tuesday. He is charged with using or attempting to use a device to intercept oral communications — an offense carrying up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
According to the FBI complaint, the thumb-sized device — equipped with a microphone and capable of connecting to a camera — was concealed in toilet paper and plugged into a USB port behind a television in an executive conference room. It was installed around September 28 and discovered on September 30. Its stored data was encrypted and could not be accessed.
Investigators say security footage showed Alfozan near the conference room nearly a dozen times in September even though he had no authorization to be there. After discovering the device, OpenAI installed a camera in the room, which later captured him checking behind the television. Days before his arrest, he also left behind a bag containing his wallet, ID, and a second, similar recording device. The complaint further alleges he spent about a month using an AI productivity tool to look up meeting-room calendars and building details.
In a twist, OpenAI says it turned its own technology on the case: "We used our models to understand the device and where it had come from, identifying that a specific employee had planted it a few days earlier," a company spokesperson said. OpenAI fired Alfozan, referred the case to the FBI, and said it has "no indications of this individual inappropriately accessing or exfiltrating model weights, source code, or customer data."
The company said it found evidence Alfozan planned to plant additional devices in other sensitive areas of its offices. FBI Director Kash Patel said the case involved sensitive communications about the company's most advanced AI technology, while Attorney General Todd Blanche described the alleged theft of cutting-edge AI intellectual property as a serious national security threat.
The arrest lands amid heightened anxiety over the security of frontier AI research. In a separate move last week, OpenAI fired three researchers after an investigation into their handling of sensitive information. Alfozan, a U.S. legal permanent resident since 2020, is due back in court on October 19.