OpenAI engineer accused of planting $13.99 recording device in executive conference room

Federal prosecutors say an OpenAI engineer planted a thumb-sized recording device in an executive conference room. The complaint also describes device-building prompts submitted through a chatbot account associated with his spouse.

According to the Justice Department, Abdulrahman Alfozan, 35, a Saudi national who has worked at OpenAI since July 2025, was arrested October 9 and charged with using or endeavoring to use a device to intercept oral communications. The complaint says OpenAI personnel found the device on or about September 30, plugged into a USB port behind a television in a San Francisco conference room and concealed in toilet paper. It was installed around September 28, and its contents were encrypted. WIRED reported it was a Seeed XIAO ESP32-S3 Sense board, which retails for $13.99.

Between September 24 and 30, the complaint says, that account asked about building a continuous audio recorder and encrypting the SD card. A second, similar device turned up in his bag around October 5. Fortune reported he was arrested three days before a one-way flight to Saudi Arabia via Istanbul. If convicted, he faces up to five years in prison, a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release. A detention hearing is set for October 19.

OpenAI says it has no indication that Alfozan inappropriately accessed or exfiltrated model weights, source code or customer data. It also told Business Insider its own models helped analyze forensic images of the device's storage.

My take: a $13.99 board and a chatbot is a thin budget for corporate espionage. What the record does not yet show is whether it captured a single word, who ordered it, or which chatbot answered. Allegations are not an eval.