WarMonitor on Nostr: Federal prosecutors have charged OpenAI engineer Abdulrahman Alfozan, 35, a Saudi ...

Federal prosecutors have charged OpenAI engineer Abdulrahman Alfozan, 35, a Saudi national, with using or attempting to use a device to intercept oral communications, the Justice Department said Tuesday. He is accused of hiding a recorder in an executive conference room at OpenAI’s San Francisco offices. He was arrested Oct. 9 and appeared in federal court Tuesday. The charge is an allegation in a criminal complaint, and he has not been convicted.

According to the complaint, OpenAI staff found the device on or about Sept. 30, plugged into a USB port on the back of a TV and concealed in toilet paper. OpenAI determined it was installed around Sept. 28 and that its contents were encrypted. The complaint alleges CCTV footage showed Alfozan near the room on multiple dates, though he had no authority to access or attend meetings there, and that before Sept. 28 he used a productivity tool to ask about building addresses, meeting rooms, calendars and executive locations.

It further alleges that on Oct. 5 he was seen looking behind the TV, and that OpenAI security later found a second, similar recording device in a bag he left unattended in another room, along with his wallet and ID.

If convicted, he faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. The release does not allege he acted for a foreign government, does not give a motive, and does not say what, if anything, the device recorded. FBI Director Kash Patel called protecting American AI innovation “one of our highest counterintelligence priorities.”

OpenAI said it used its internal AI models to identify him and trace the device, and that it has no indication he accessed or took model weights, source code or customer data. The company fired him. The FBI is investigating.