OpenAI engineer charged with hiding a recording device in an executive conference room

Federal prosecutors in the Northern District of California have charged Abdulrahman Alfozan, a 35-year-old Saudi national and OpenAI engineer, with using or attempting to use a device to intercept oral communications. The charge carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. According to the criminal complaint reported by The Record, Alfozan inserted a recording device into a USB port on the back of a television in an executive conference room in OpenAI's San Francisco office around September 28. Staff found it on September 30. The device was reportedly wrapped in toilet paper and its recordings were encrypted. The Register reports it was a Seeed XIAO ESP32-S3 Sense, and that company security staff later found a second device in his bag. Prosecutors say the room often hosted meetings about proprietary research, business plans and government engagements, and that Alfozan was not authorized to enter it. He joined OpenAI in July 2025 and worked on the product team. He was fired and arrested on October 9 and first appeared in court on October 13. OpenAI says it used its own models to analyze the device and has no indication that he accessed or took model weights, source code or customer data. The case shows that AI labs face physical insider threats, not only online ones.