Prosecutors seek to detain engineer accused of bugging OpenAI conference room

Federal prosecutors say Abdulrahman Alfozan, a former OpenAI engineer charged with planting a recording device in an executive conference room, was 'mere days' from flying to Saudi Arabia when he was arrested. His wife and young son left the United States the day after his arrest, on one-way tickets booked and paid for by a Saudi military official. A judge in San Francisco will weigh the government's detention request on Monday.

The filings describe a defendant with ample resources — a decade of high-tech compensation in the Bay Area, at least two bank accounts in Saudi Arabia — and, in the prosecutors' words, considerable support from a foreign government. Alfozan, a 35-year-old Saudi national who had worked at OpenAI since July 2025, was in frequent communication with a member of the Saudi royal family who repeatedly tried to recruit him for an artificial intelligence venture being launched in the kingdom. In WhatsApp messages cited in court, Alfozan told the royal he would not leave OpenAI until his stock had vested, even as he explored career opportunities in Saudi Arabia.

The alleged operation was small and deliberate. Prosecutors say Alfozan concealed an audio recording device in toilet paper and plugged it into a USB port on the back of a television in a conference room he was not authorized to enter — a room used for meetings between company leaders, government officials and other executives, where proprietary research and nonpublic strategic information were discussed. Security cameras captured him entering the room and checking behind the television after the installation. The device remained there for several days before being found on September 30. OpenAI says the hardware was sophisticated, designed to evade detection, with encryption and audio-monitoring capabilities, and that it has evidence Alfozan planned to place additional devices elsewhere in the office.

His lawyers tell a different story. They say the one-way family tickets were purchased more than two weeks before the recording devices were allegedly installed, for a roughly two-month paternity leave in Saudi Arabia following the birth of the couple's American-citizen son. Alfozan has lived in the United States for fifteen years, attended MIT and the University of California, Berkeley, held a green card since 2020, and had a naturalization interview scheduled for next month. The defense proposes home confinement with GPS monitoring and a surrendered passport rather than federal custody.

Saudi Arabia has no extradition treaty with the United States, and prosecutors argue Alfozan has little incentive to remain and face trial. The case is separate from OpenAI's civil lawsuit against another former employee, whom the company accuses of taking more than a hundred confidential files to Apple.

Prosecutors have not said what Alfozan might have wanted with the recordings.