FBI arrests OpenAI engineer over bathroom paper-wrapped recording machine
The FBI arrested an OpenAI worker after he allegedly planted a recording machine at one of many firm’s San Francisco workplace buildings.
OpenAI allegedly caught Abdulrahman Alfozan, a 35-year-old engineer from Saudi Arabia, planting a tool wrapped in bathroom paper into the USB port of a tv in an govt convention room, in accordance with an FBI news release. The firm decided Alfozan planted the machine on or about Sept. 28 and that its contents have been encrypted.
OpenAI introduced in a Tuesday post on X that it has “no indications of this particular person inappropriately accessing or exfiltrating mannequin weights, supply code, or buyer knowledge.” Without naming Alfozan, OpenAI mentioned, “The worker was terminated.”
The firm additionally introduced that it used its personal fashions to trace down the machine; nonetheless, it didn’t disclose particulars on the way it used synthetic intelligence to crack the case. An OpenAI spokesperson was not instantly out there for remark.
“We take defending our know-how, knowledge, and other people severely, and as a matter of nationwide significance,” the corporate mentioned within the X submit. “Our safety program is designed to guard in opposition to a variety of risk actors, from insider dangers to cybercriminals to nation states, and this case is an instance of how AI will help tackle these refined safety threats.”
Alfozan had been employed at OpenAI since August 2025. According to his LinkedIn, he beforehand was a founding engineer at Nash and a senior programs engineer at Meta.
The FBI alleges that in days main as much as Sept. 28, Alfozan used a “productiveness instrument” to ask about OpenAI assembly rooms, places of executives and associate conferences. The company additionally alleges an account related to Alfozan’s partner has queried a chatbot about constructing a “steady audio recorder.” On Oct. 5, OpenAI safety allegedly searched Alfozan’s bag on the firm’s workplaces and located one other recording machine.
Alfozan is charged with “utilizing or endeavoring to make use of an digital, mechanical, or different machine to intercept oral communications” and will resist 5 years in jail and a $250,000 high quality if convicted. It is unclear if Alfozan has illustration presently; the federal public defender’s workplace in San Francisco didn’t affirm by publication of this text if it was representing Alfozan. Alfozan didn’t reply to a request for remark.
“The Bay Area and Silicon Valley lead the planet in growing tomorrow’s know-how, and our Office will proceed to face on the forefront of defending that American innovation,” mentioned Craig H. Missakian, U.S. lawyer for the Northern District of California, in an announcement. “For us it’s a matter of nationwide safety. This arrest highlights our relentless efforts in partnership with the FBI to establish and prosecute those that search to steal our know-how, as alleged within the grievance.”
Contact tech reporter Matthew Brown at [email protected] or matthewbrownsfgate.11 on Signal.
