Recording device hidden in toilet paper found in top-secret OpenAI meeting room

It took OpenAI two days to notice that a recording device was hidden in a restricted executive conference room where leadership met to discuss highly confidential information, including technical progress, government engagements, and commercial partnerships.

Only those with special clearance are supposed to access that room. But the FBI believes the recording device was planted by Abdulrahman Alfozan, a 35-year-old engineer from Saudi Arabia, who became a permanent US legal resident in 2020. In a press release Tuesday announcing his arrest, the FBI alleged that chatbot logs and CCTV footage suggested that Alfozan—who worked as an OpenAI engineer for more than a year—sought to use the device to spy on OpenAI and risked leaking trade secrets in a way that threatened national security.

To conceal the USB device, Alfozan allegedly wrapped it in toilet paper, then plugged it into the back of a conference room television. The device was likely planted on September 28, and OpenAI found it on September 30 and quickly determined that its contents were encrypted, the FBI said. Days later, on October 5, OpenAI installed a camera in that conference room, and the CCTV footage allegedly showed Alfozan attempting to retrieve the recording device that same day.

CCTV screenshot.

via Liang affidavit

CCTV screenshot. via Liang affidavit

Toilet paper-wrapped recording device.

via Liang affidavit

Toilet paper-wrapped recording device. via Liang affidavit

CCTV screenshot. via Liang affidavit

Toilet paper-wrapped recording device. via Liang affidavit

If convicted of violating laws against unlawful recordings, Alfozan faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, the FBI said.

OpenAI did not immediately move to eject Alfozan as a suspected spy. Instead, it gradually cut off his access to systems while working with the FBI to analyze the recording device’s contents. Once enough evidence was gathered, OpenAI timed Alfozan’s firing on Friday with the FBI’s arrest.

Citing a Trump memo ordering coordinated efforts to maintain America’s AI advantage, FBI Director Kash Patel celebrated Alfozan’s arrest and vowed to continue policing efforts to spy on frontier labs like OpenAI.

It’s “essential to safeguarding our nation’s economic strength and national security, and the FBI views that mission as one of our highest counterintelligence priorities,” Patel said.

Catching an accused AI spy

OpenAI hired Alfozan in July 2025, but the record suggests that he started acting suspiciously in the past few months.

In August, Alfozan allegedly used an OpenAI productivity agent to figure out where and when sensitive meetings were held, a recently unsealed affidavit submitted by FBI special agent Lydia Liang said.

Credit: via Liang’s affidavit

Liang is a data analyst who joined the FBI after working for various tech companies. She analyzed the recording device that OpenAI found, which she said was a Chinese-made Seeed XIAO ESP32-S3 Sense.

According to Liang, the Seeed device “had been customized to obfuscate anything stored on the device, such as potentially intercepted audio communications.” And the microSD card had “a layout consistent with a potentially encrypted file system.”

In addition to reviewing Alfozan’s queries to OpenAI’s productivity agent, the FBI also reviewed an AI chatbot account associated with his spouse. Those logs showed user prompts referencing the Seeed device’s unique MAC address, the FBI said, while researching how to continuously record on that device, set up speech-triggered recording, and encrypt an SD card, among other queries.

Alfozan’s spouse’s logs.

Credit: via Liang’s affidavit

“These written prompts attributable to Alfozan and/or his spouse, indicate that Alfozan inserted Recording Device 1 into the television in Conference Room 1 and was interested in building, customizing, installing, audio recording, testing, obfuscating, and remote accessing, among other things, a surreptitious audio listening and recording device,” Liang said.