FBI arrests OpenAI employee accused of planting secret recording device in conference room
Source: Fortune ·
The suspect, Abdurahman Alfozan, is a Saudi national who joined OpenAI in 2025.
From the source
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,”…