An OpenAI Engineer's Bugging Case Cites His Wife's ChatGPT Prompts. OpenAI Didn't Answer TDFP's Privacy Questions.
Federal prosecutors charging an OpenAI engineer with hiding a recording device in an executive conference room are relying in part on chatbot prompts from an account tied to his spouse, who has not been charged. The Digital Free Press asked OpenAI how that account was linked to him, who reviewed it and how it reached the FBI. OpenAI did not respond to TDFP's request for comment by deadline.
Abdulrahman Alfozan, 35, a Saudi national who had worked at OpenAI as an engineer since July 2025, was arrested Oct. 9, according to the Justice Department. He is charged by criminal complaint with one count of using or trying to use a device to intercept oral communications, under 18 U.S.C. 2511(1)(b). He made his first appearance Tuesday in federal court in San Francisco, was remanded to custody, and has a detention hearing set for Oct. 19 before Magistrate Judge Alex G. Tse, according to the court docket. He has not been convicted and is presumed innocent.
According to the Justice Department, OpenAI staff found the device on or about Sept. 30, plugged into a USB port on the back of a television in an executive conference room in one of the company's San Francisco buildings. It had been wrapped in toilet paper. The FBI affidavit identifies it as a Seeed XIAO ESP32-S3 Sense, a thumb-sized board with a microphone and microSD storage, made by a company the affidavit says is based in Shenzhen, China. When OpenAI made a forensic copy of the memory card, none of the files could be recovered or decrypted, the affidavit says. What, if anything, the device recorded has not been made public.
The complaint also cites camera footage that it says shows Alfozan near the room on 10 days in September, internal searches he made about meeting rooms and where "leadership and exec" meet, and a second, similar device that security staff found in a bag he left unattended on Oct. 5.
THE OPENAI ENGINEER'S WIFE'S ACCOUNT
The part of the case that reaches beyond one employee is the chatbot account. The Justice Department says an account "associated with Alfozan's spouse" submitted prompts between Sept. 24 and Sept. 30 about how to "build a continuous audio recorder," "improve audio and live listening" and "encrypt the SD card." On Sept. 27 and 28, the same account asked about the device's custom header and its unique MAC address, according to the department.
The FBI affidavit says the spouse's account was tied to Alfozan because it shared "installation identifiers, logged IP usage, and user path name references" with his own chatbot account. The complaint does not name the chatbot or say how investigators obtained the chat history. OpenAI confirmed to Fortune that the chatbot was ChatGPT, as first reported by Fortune on Wednesday.
In a statement posted Oct. 13, OpenAI said: "We 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. We referred the matter to the FBI." The company said it had no indication that he accessed or took model weights, source code or customer data, and that he was fired.
WHAT TDFP ASKED OPENAI
On Oct. 13, TDFP emailed OpenAI's press office these questions, with a deadline of 5 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday, Oct. 14:
1. Was the account mentioned by the DOJ a ChatGPT account?
2. How did OpenAI identify and link a non-employee's account to the employee, and who decided to review its conversation history?
3. Was that chat history given to the FBI voluntarily, or in response to legal process such as a subpoena or warrant?
4. Under what policy does OpenAI review or disclose a user's conversations in a security investigation like this, and was the user notified?
OpenAI did not respond to TDFP's request for comment by deadline. The company did confirm the first point to Fortune. The other three questions remain unanswered, and they matter to anyone who shares a home, a computer or a network with someone else.
THE NATIONAL SECURITY FRAMING
The complaint does not charge espionage or trade-secret theft, and it alleges no foreign government involvement. Still, the case is being handled with help from the National Security Division's Counterintelligence and Export Control Section. FBI Director Kash Patel called protecting American super intelligence innovation "one of our highest counterintelligence priorities." U.S. Attorney Craig H. Missakian said, "For us it is a matter of national security."
If convicted, Alfozan faces up to five years in prison, a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release. Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicholas M. Parker is prosecuting the case. Court records list attorney William V. Pernik for the defense.
TDFP will keep asking OpenAI how it handles a user's private conversations when the company itself is the victim.
Hold Everyone Accountable.
Sources: U.S. Department of Justice press release 26-1173 (Oct. 13, 2026); criminal complaint and FBI affidavit, United States v. Alfozan, No. 3:26-mj-71329 (N.D. Cal.), filed Oct. 8, 2026; court docket (CourtListener); OpenAI Newsroom statement on X, Oct. 13, 2026; Fortune, Oct. 14, 2026.
Images: Cover shows the OpenAI logo over the Phillip Burton Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse in San Francisco (photo: Marincyclist, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons). In-post graphic: The Digital Free Press (photo: Jernej Furman, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons).
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