OpenAI Engineer Charged After Hidden Recorder Found in Executive Conference Room

OpenAI says it found a hidden recording device in one of its San Francisco offices, and the U.S. Justice Department has charged an OpenAI engineer over it.

What prosecutors allege

According to a federal criminal complaint unsealed on October 13, 2026, OpenAI personnel discovered the device on or about September 30. It was inserted into a USB port on the back of a television in an executive conference room, concealed in toilet paper, and its contents were encrypted. OpenAI determined it had been installed on or about September 28.

The Justice Department identified the defendant as Abdulrahman Alfozan, 35, a Saudi national who had worked at OpenAI as an engineer since July 2025. The complaint alleges that:

• CCTV footage showed him near the executive conference room on multiple dates before the device was found, although he had no authority to access the room or join its meetings.
• Before September 28 he used a productivity tool to ask about OpenAI building addresses, meeting rooms and calendars, and “leadership and exec” locations.
• A chatbot account associated with his spouse, which shared identifiers with his own account, submitted prompts between September 24 and 30 about building a continuous audio recorder, adding Wi-Fi connectivity and encrypting an SD card, and later about the specific device’s MAC address.
• On October 5 he entered the conference room and appeared to look behind the television, and the same day OpenAI security found a second, similar recording device in a bag he left unattended, along with his wallet and ID.

Prosecutors say meetings in that room frequently involved highly confidential technical, commercial and strategic information.

The charge

He was arrested on October 9 and charged with using or endeavoring to use a device to intercept oral communications. He made his first appearance in federal court on October 13. If convicted, he faces a maximum of 5 years in prison, a $250,000 fine and 3 years of supervised release. A complaint contains allegations only, and a defendant is presumed innocent unless proven guilty. The FBI is investigating.

What OpenAI says

In a post from its newsroom account, OpenAI said it used its own models to understand the device and where it came from, identifying the employee who planted it a few days earlier. It referred the matter to the FBI and terminated the employee. OpenAI said it has no indication that the individual inappropriately accessed or exfiltrated model weights, source code or customer data.

Why it matters

Frontier AI labs hold some of the most valuable secrets in tech, and U.S. officials framed the case as a national security matter. It is also an unusual example of a lab saying its own AI helped catch an insider threat.