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Foldable phones edge toward mainstream after early stumbles9to5Mac columnist calls Apple Watch Series 12 a worthy WHOOP replacement but misses sleep-based day trackingOpenAI Employee Abdulrahman Alfozan Seeks Bail After FBI Arrest Over Alleged Conference-Room RecorderFake WatchGuard VPN Download Site Stole Admin Credentials, Served Signed ClientTechRadar calls Sony ULT Tower 7 a top-tier party speaker with deep bassEngadget: Capping Frame Rates Can Cut GPU Load and Screen Tearing
Cybersecurity

OpenAI Employee Abdulrahman Alfozan Seeks Bail After FBI Arrest Over Alleged Conference-Room Recorder

OpenAI's Alfozan arrested by FBI over alleged conference-room recorder; bail sought.

AI News Feed · 2026-10-19 03:43

Before joining OpenAI, Alfozan was an engineer at Meta and then worked at a start-up that went through Y Combinator, according to the New York Times, as cited by Slashdot. Court documents say he gained permanent residency status in the United States in 2020 and was hired by OpenAI in July 2025.

According to a statement from the U.S. Justice Department, 14 months after he was hired, a recording device was inserted into a USB port on the back of a television in the executive conference room and then concealed in toilet paper. The statement included a photo of a device and a photo of Alfozan entering the executive conference room and appearing to look behind the television where the device was inserted.

The FBI said a chatbot account associated with Alfozan's spouse showed prompts asking about installing and obfuscating a recording device. The complaint alleges that OpenAI security personnel also found a bag Alfozan left in a different room containing his wallet, his ID and another recording device. According to the FBI, discussions in that room included highly confidential technical, commercial and strategic information, including proprietary research, as well as nonpublic information about OpenAI's technical progress and strategic decisions.

If convicted, Alfozan faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, followed by three years of supervised release.

On Friday, his lawyers requested his release from custody. They said he agrees to wear an ankle monitor, remain at home, surrender his passport and not possess any covert audio or video recording or surveillance device. They argued that a one-way ticket he had purchased to Saudi Arabia continued a long-standing habit of buying one-way tickets over the years because his tech career often involves last-minute changes to meeting schedules. They said 70% of airline bookings in his email since January 2021, or 96 of 138, were one-way tickets. His lawyers also presented 46 letters of support, including letters from former Meta colleagues, ten company founders and chief executives, and more than a dozen engineers and engineering managers.