OpenAI engineer seems to face a federal charge over a hidden recording device

A federal criminal complaint unsealed on Tuesday accuses an OpenAI engineer of hiding a recording device in an executive conference room at the ChatGPT maker’s San Francisco offices, the Justice Department says. The DOJ names him as Abdulrahman Alfozan, 35, “a national of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” and says he faces a charge of “using or endeavoring to use an electronic, mechanical, or other device to intercept oral communications.” Agents arrested him on October 9, the DOJ says, and CBS News reports that he made his initial appearance in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on Tuesday. In the earliest disclosure this desk found, OpenAI posted about the case at 12:48 PM PT from its OpenAI Newsroom account on X, about 20 minutes before the DOJ release; the BBC, DW, CBS News, Al Jazeera and Business Insider followed through the afternoon and evening, Pacific time. None of the allegations has faced a test in court, and this desk did not read the complaint itself, only the DOJ’s summary of it.

The DOJ’s summary sets out the device and the room. “On or about Sept. 30, OpenAI personnel discovered a surreptitious audio recording device (Recording Device 1) inserted into a USB port on the back of a television in an executive conference room inside one of their buildings in San Francisco,” the release says, adding that OpenAI “determined that the device, which had been concealed in toilet paper, was installed on or about Sept. 28, and that its contents were encrypted.” Business Insider, quoting the complaint, describes the device as a “thumb-sized development board with a detachable camera sensor, digital microphone, and microSD storage.” DW’s account says the suspect hid a USB device “inside a television”; the DOJ’s own wording puts it in a USB port on the back of the set. According to the DOJ, meetings in that room “frequently involved discussions of highly confidential technical, commercial, and strategic information,” including research, product plans and “government engagements.”

OpenAI credits its own software with the identification. “We discovered a sophisticated recording device that was hidden inside one of our offices,” the company wrote on X. “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. We referred the matter to the FBI, and we’re grateful to the agents and prosecutors who moved quickly to make an arrest.” Business Insider says OpenAI told it the models helped analyse forensic images of the device’s storage, and that OpenAI says it holds evidence the employee intended to plant more devices around its offices; this desk could not verify that claim, and the DOJ release does not mention it. The DOJ adds that CCTV footage showed Alfozan near the room “on multiple dates prior to the device’s discovery,” although “he had no authority to access or to participate in meetings” there. DW reports that, after someone noticed this, another camera went into the room and filmed the suspect checking on the device; the DOJ release says only that on October 5 he “entered the executive conference room and appeared to look behind the television.”

Prosecutors also point to his searches and prompts. Before September 28, the DOJ says, Alfozan “used a productivity tool to make multiple inquiries” about OpenAI’s building addresses, meeting rooms, room capacities and calendars, “leadership and exec” locations and external partner meetings. Business Insider says the complaint lists queries to that “productivity agent” such as “today’s meetings in this room.” The DOJ then says “a chatbot account associated with Alfozan’s spouse (which shared multiple identifiers and attributes with Alfozan’s own chatbot account)” sent prompts between September 24 and September 30 about “build[ing] a continuous audio recorder,” “customiz[ing] Wi-Fi . . . connectivity,” “improv[ing] audio and live listening,” and “encrypt[ing] the SD card,” plus, on September 27 and 28, prompts about the device’s “custom header and unique MAC address.” CBS News and Business Insider repeat the spouse-account detail. The BBC’s copy, by contrast, says “He is also accused of using the chatbot to ask about” those same items, without the spouse link; neither the DOJ nor the outlets name which company ran the chatbot.

Officials cast the case as a national-security matter. The DOJ release quotes FBI Director Kash Patel: “According to the complaint unsealed today, Abdulrahman Alfozan allegedly concealed a covert recording device inside his employer’s executive conference room to secretly capture sensitive communications about the company’s super intelligence technology.” Patel adds: “Protecting American SI innovation is essential to safeguarding our nation’s economic strength and national security.” Al Jazeera renders that line as “Protecting American [super intelligence] innovation.” Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton, in the same release, says the case “underscores why winning the global super intelligence race is a national security prerogative,” and U.S. Attorney Craig H. Missakian says: “For us it is a matter of national security.” Al Jazeera also quotes US Attorney General Todd Blanche saying that “theft of intellectual property involving cutting-edge super intelligence technology poses a serious threat to our national security”; this desk did not find those Blanche lines in the DOJ release it read. DW notes that “The criminal complaint did not specify what the suspect might have wanted to do with the recordings.”

The DOJ also describes events on October 5. It says that on or about that day Alfozan “left a bag unattended in a different room in an OpenAI building,” and that OpenAI security staff opened it and found, “among other things, including Alfozan’s wallet and ID — another recording device (Recording Device 2) similar to Recording Device 1.” CBS News and the BBC carry the same account, and Al Jazeera says security personnel “reportedly found a second listening device in Alfozan’s bag.” By the DOJ’s dates, the arrest came nine days after the discovery; DW puts it as “a week after the device was discovered.” OpenAI says on X that “The employee was terminated,” and the BBC, Al Jazeera and DW repeat that he lost his job. OpenAI’s post also says it has “no indications of this individual inappropriately accessing or exfiltrating model weights, source code, or customer data.”

The defence urges caution. Alfozan’s attorney, William Pernik, told CBS News that his client has the presumption of innocence and cautioned against “jumping to conclusions at this very early stage of the case when very little information is known,” or seeking to “politicize” a prosecution based on factors like nationality, CBS reports. The BBC, writing earlier, said it remained unclear whether he had legal representation, and Business Insider says his attorney did not return its request for comment. CBS says he returns to federal court on October 19 for a detention hearing. If convicted, he faces “a maximum penalty of 5 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, followed by 3 years of supervised release,” the DOJ says; the BBC and Al Jazeera give the same five-year and $250,000 figures. Business Insider adds context of its own: the case follows separate firings of three OpenAI safety and alignment staff, which it says had nothing to do with the device. Al Jazeera frames the incident as raising “concerns about surveillance and underhanded efforts to gain an edge in the AI sector.”