OpenAI Engineer Charged With Planting Spy Device in Executive Conference Room

A Saudi national employed as an engineer at OpenAI has been charged with secretly planting a recording device in an executive conference room at the company's San Francisco offices, according to reporting from The Record, BleepingComputer, Decrypt and Tom's Hardware.

The U.S. Department of Justice identified the accused as Abdulrahman Alfozan, 35, Tom's Hardware reported. The charge involves allegedly using or attempting to use a device to intercept oral communications, an offense carrying a potential penalty of up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

According to the FBI criminal complaint cited by Tom's Hardware, Alfozan is accused of installing a covert listening device in the back of a television in the meeting room and covering it with toilet paper on or around September 28. The device was found a couple of days later. The complaint identified the hardware as a Seeed Xiao ESP32-S3 Sense microcontroller, listed at $14 on the Seeed Studio website and $24 on Amazon. Decrypt reported that the recorder was encrypted and that OpenAI said its own models helped trace the device back to the engineer.