OpenAI bugging suspect booked one-way ticket to Saudi Arabia with family before arrest

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Abdulrahman Alfozan, the Saudi national charged with secretly installing a recording device in an executive conference room at OpenAI, had booked a one-way ticket from San Francisco to Saudi Arabia with his wife and a third family member before his arrest, federal prosecutors told a judge in a newly unsealed court filing. Alfozan "has the means — and will have the incentive — to flee the United States sooner if he learns about this case before he is arrested," the U.S. Attorney's Office in San Francisco said in the Oct. 8 filing, which asked a judge to seal a criminal complaint against him and a warrant for his arrest. The filing said the tickets were booked for Oct. 12, from San Francisco to Saudi Arabia via Istanbul. The judge granted the sealing request, and Alfozan was arrested Oct. 9, the Department of Justice has said. He has been detained since his arrest. Alfozan, 35, is a venture partner in a Saudi Arabian venture capital firm that lists a prince from that nation's ruling royal family as a fellow partner. The VC firm, Raed Ventures, says on its website that Alfozan, who lives in the San Francisco area, "is a seasoned technology professional with deep experience in startups, entrepreneurship, and scaling tech companies." "He currently serves as Engineering Lead at OpenAI, with a focus on AI Agents and the data platform," Alfozan's bio page on Raed's site says. Raed, which focuses on investments in the Middle East, announced Alfozan had joined the firm on Feb. 8, 2025, two days after Raed said Prince Khalid Bin Bader Al Saud had joined as a venture partner. A venture partner usually is a consulting or project-based role, not an investing partner or director who is responsible for raising funds or leading deals. Alfozan had worked at OpenAI since July 2025, according to the Department of Justice. The company said it terminated him this month. The Financial Times reported Wednesday that when Saudi tech influencers visited San Francisco in September, "it was Alfozan who welcomed them to OpenAI offices where he gave them tours." A former CIA official with extensive experience in the Middle East, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the nature of their past work, told CNBC that Raed Ventures is "basically a state organ" of the Saudi government. One of Raed's funds in December 2024 received an investment from Saudi Venture Capital, a subsidiary of SME Bank, which is part of Saudi Arabia's National Development Fund. In addition to being a venture partner in Raed, the prince, Khalid Bin Bader Al Saud, is a member of the ruling Al Saud family, and the managing director and vice chairman of his family's private office, according to his bio on Raed's website. The former CIA official said that if Alfozan's alleged bugging of OpenAI is part of a state-sponsored espionage effort, it shows that "in the AI and tech boom, even the kingdom of Saudi Arabia has assessed that the risk is worth the gain to engage in economic espionage against a close ally." The former official also said this incident is "probably the tip of the iceberg." The criminal complaint against Alfozan does not allege that Raed or its other partners were aware of Alfozan allegedly planting a recording device at OpenAI. The case is being prosecuted by the National Security, Cyber & Special Prosecutions Section of the United States Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California, according to the Department of Justice. Alfozan is charged in U.S. District Court in San Francisco with one count of using or attempting to use an electronic, mechanical or other device to intercept oral communications. He is being detained pending an Oct. 19 detention hearing, where his lawyer could argue for his release on bond. If convicted, he faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, DOJ said. Alfozan is not charged with corporate espionage or stealing trade secrets. OpenAI earlier this year held discussions with Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, the country's sovereign wealth fund, about investing in the AI company. Raed did not immediately respond to requests for comment. CNBC has also requested comment from the Saudi embassy in Washington. Alfozan's criminal defense attorney, William Pernik, told CNBC by email, "At this point, the information provided has been extremely limited, as the charging documents have just been unsealed yesterday." OpenAI declined to comment on Wednesday about whether it knew about Alfozan's position at the Saudi firm. And the company said it can't share more details about the conference room in question due to operational security concerns. The company said in a post on X on Tuesday, "At this time, we have no indications of this individual inappropriately accessing or exfiltrating model weights, source code, or customer data." "We take protecting our technology, data and people seriously, and as a matter of national importance," the company said. "Our security program is designed to protect against a wide range of threat actors, from insider risks to cybercriminals to nation states, and this case is an example of how AI can help address these sophisticated security threats." Alfozan, in a recent interview with the podcast Identity Capital about his career, noted that in July 2016, he and other Saudi nationals who were working at various tech companies in Silicon Valley met with their nation's now-de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The prince was visiting Silicon Valley as part of a U.S. tour to promote his "Vision 2030" economic diversification plan. "One of the issues we discussed was whether we should move back to [the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia] now and bring our technical skills to improve the economy ... or should we work a few more years before we go back in order to gain more experience," Alfozan said in the interview, which was conducted in Arabic, translated by CNBC and posted online Sept. 24. Bin Salman replied that "the country was undergoing major development and did not have the talent to train the next generation who would carry on those development plans," Alfozan said. Alfozan added that the group of young workers "decided it was best to continue to learn and develop our skills before taking our knowledge back to [Saudi Arabia] to improve the tech sector." Throughout the podcast, Alfozan discusses in detail his trajectory from coding in high school in Dammam, Saudi Arabia, to his career in the U.S. At one point in the interview, he refers to himself as an "introvert," who still pushes himself to help other young professionals find success in Silicon Valley. Days after the podcast was posted, on Sept. 30, a federal criminal complaint alleges that OpenAI staff discovered "a surreptitious audio recording device inserted into a USB port on the back of a television in" a conference room. The device, which had a detachable camera sensor, digital microphone, and microSD storage, was concealed in toilet paper, according to the complaint. Alfozan had no authority to enter the conference room, which is frequently used for "discussions of highly confidential technical, commercial, and strategic information," according to the complaint. The conference room can be reserved "only by executives and executive assistants," and is typically used "for internal leadership meetings and technical and product sessions, as well as external briefings with government officials and business counterparts," the complaint said. Closed-circuit TV footage at OpenAI showed Alfozan close to the conference room on multiple days in September at various times, according to the complaint. The filing also said that in August, and again in September, Alfozan used an AI productivity tool to inquire about OpenAI's building addresses, meeting rooms, meeting-room capacities and calendars, as well as "external partner meetings." And a chatbot associated with Alfozan's spouse, which the complaint alleges shared several identifying characteristics with his own account, allegedly submitted detailed prompts about building, customizing, installing and remotely accessing a recording device. Alfozan's spouse, who was not identified in the complaint, has not been charged with any wrongdoing. After the recording device was found hidden in the TV in the conference room, OpenAI placed a camera in that room, the complaint says. Alfozan was seen on that camera entering the conference room at about 1:20 p.m. on Oct. 5, and "checking behind the television into which Recording Device 1 had been inserted," the complaint alleges. That same day, the complaint said, Alfozan left a bag unattended in a printer room at OpenAI. Inside that bag, OpenAI security found his wallet, ID and "another recording device" made by the same Chinese manufacturer, Seeed, which made the device found inserted in the conference room's TV, the complaint says. The second recording device, like the first one, "had a recording microcontroller," and "had been customized to obfuscate anything stored on the device, such as potentially intercepted audio communications," the complaint said. Alfozan reported to OpenAI that he had lost the bag, which was returned to him without the second recording device, according to the complaint. He did not inquire about the device, although he asked about certain other items that he said were missing, the complaint said. "Any attempt to illicitly obtain protected information from U.S. super intelligence and technology companies threatens both American innovation and the national security interests those advancements support," Scott Schelble, special agent in charge of the FBI San Francisco Field Office, said in a statement on Tuesday about Alfozan's arrest, using the Trump administration's preferred term for artificial intelligence. Before joining OpenAI, Alfozan had a long track record of work experience in the Bay Area. On his LinkedIn page, Alfozan describes himself as an "Experienced Engineering Lead with 11 years of building scalable and reliable software systems in the data and AI/ML domains." "Proven track record of leading engineering teams, delivering complex projects and enterprise products. Driven by strong project management skills and a passion for cultivating a culture of collaboration and engineering excellence," his bio there says. Before joining OpenAI, Alfozan was a founding engineer at Nash, an AI firm focused on logistics, according to his LinkedIn page. And prior to Nash, he worked as a senior systems engineer at Facebook's parent company, Meta, from 2017 through 2022, according to his LinkedIn page. His internships before that included one at Microsoft in 2014, his bio says. Alfozan studied computer science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and data science at the University of California, Berkeley, according to his LinkedIn page. MIT's media relations office said he was enrolled there from January 2011 through January 2014, and again from February 2016 through May 2016, without receiving a degree. A UC Berkeley spokesperson said Alfozan attended the school from January 2023 through May 2025, and earned a master's degree. In 2016, he was a research intern at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia, he said on LinkedIn. In 2020, he won a $50,000 second prize in the Saudi Covid-19 Challenge, a hackathon event, according to the profile. Alfozan's home, on a hill in Millbrae, California, overlooks San Francisco Bay with views of Mount Diablo. The small San Mateo County suburb, which is popular with tech workers, is located about 30 minutes south of San Francisco and 25 minutes from Stanford University. No one answered the doorbell of the home Wednesday when a CNBC reporter rang. The Financial Times reported that Alfozan was "born in the ultraconservative central region of Qassim," but "grew up in Dammam in the kingdom's oil-rich Eastern Province." The FT also reported that in a documentary about Alfozan that aired on Saudi television, his father said that as a young student in a government-backed program for gifted children to develop skills in mathematics, physics and engineering, Alfozan "would read the encyclopedia cover to cover." "We are waiting to see what evidence the government has against our client, and look forward to presenting all appropriate defenses in court," Pernik, Alfozan's attorney, said. "What I can tell you by way of a statement is that, like countless Americans, Mr. Alfozan came to this country years ago as a young person with a dream," the attorney said. "He spent years studying, working and contributing to an American technological sector that leads the world, a sector built in large part by immigrants like him." "These allegations appear wholly out of character for him, and we will relentlessly investigate all evidence produced by the government in this case to understand what actually happened, who was responsible, and any possible reasons why," Pernik said. The lawyer noted that Alfozan is "charged with violating a federal recording statute, not stealing trade secrets or working as a foreign agent." "There is no evidence to suggest otherwise at this time that has been shared with us," Pernik said. "Where someone was born is not evidence of anything and national origins is — and always should be — a protected status under our system of laws." — Ashley Capoot, Lora Kolodny and Reem Nasr contributed to this report.