OpenAI employee arrested on suspicion of planting a hidden recording device in a company meeting room
Prepared by Sintelligent with the help of SI. Published in SI: . Updated: .
Closed-door discussions at a leading SI lab have become the target of covert eavesdropping; there are so far no signs that models or customer data were accessed.
According to the US Department of Justice, 35-year-old Abdulrahman Alfozan, a Saudi national who has worked as an OpenAI engineer since July 2025, is charged with using a device to intercept oral communications. An encrypted recording device hidden in toilet paper was found on September 30 in a USB port of a TV in the executive meeting room in San Francisco (installed around September 28); a second device was found on October 5 in a bag he had left, and he was arrested on October 9. According to the charges, between September 24 and 30 he asked a chatbot questions about recording audio and customizing devices. As relayed by The Guardian, OpenAI said it used its own model to understand the device it found, sees no signs of access to model weights, source code or customer data, and has fired the employee. The maximum penalty under the statute is 5 years in prison and a $250,000 fine; the defendant's position was not found in the sources checked.
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