FBI arrests OpenAI employee accused of planting secret recording device in conference room

In a stunning disclosure, the Federal Bureau of Investigations (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.

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 Abdurahman Alfozan, 35, a citizen of Saudi Arabia, the FBI said, without specifying the nature of his status as a U.S. resident.

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).

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.