Federal prosecutors said a former OpenAI engineer accused of planting a recording device had a one-way ticket booked to Saudi Arabia.
In newly unsealed court documents, it was revealed that the federal government feared its case against Abdulrahman Alfozan, a Saudi national, might be jeopardized if information about it leaked.
“The defendant, his wife, and a third family member have booked one-way tickets from San Francisco to Saudi Arabia (via Istanbul) for Monday, October 12, 2026,” the prosecutors, including US Attorney for the Northern District of California Craig Missakian, wrote in an October 8 court filing.
The prosecutors wrote that Alfozan had “the means—and will have an incentive—to flee the United States sooner if he learns about this case before he is arrested.”
On October 9, the FBI arrested Alfozan. He made his initial court appearance on Wednesday when the government unveiled its case against him. Alfozan has been charged with “use of an electronic, mechanical, or other device to intercept oral communications,” a felony that carries a maximum of five years in prison.
According to the criminal complaint against Alfozan, the company found a USB device surreptitiously placed on the back of a television located in an “executive conference room.” The device was concealed in toilet paper, the complaint said.
Alfozan’s lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
OpenAI previously said in a statement that it used “our models to understand the device and where it had come from, identifying that a specific employee had planted it a few days earlier.”
