Analysis
The lawyer for the OpenAI employee arrested over a hidden recording device at the company's San Francisco headquarters says the allegations are 'wholly out of character' for his client -- the first detailed defense since Pulse covered the arrest on October 13.
William Pernik, the attorney for Abdulrahman Alfozan, told Fortune that his client was surprised by the search and arrest and that Pernik's own information is still limited. Federal prosecutors allege Alfozan planted the device in OpenAI's offices on September 28, after more than a month of planning that reportedly included using ChatGPT and an internal agentic tool; OpenAI's security team found the device during a routine sweep two days later. OpenAI fired Alfozan on October 9, the same day the FBI arrested him. He is charged under a general federal recording statute -- not with trade-secret theft -- and neither OpenAI nor the FBI has said it found evidence he leaked anything.
“OpenAI fired Alfozan on October 9, the same day the FBI arrested him.”
What changed since the October 13 coverage is the travel detail: Alfozan, his wife and their young child had a prepaid one-way flight from San Francisco to Saudi Arabia booked for October 12, which prosecutors suggest he may have intended to use to leave the country. Pernik says the reason for the trip and when it was booked are still unclear, and asked the public not to draw conclusions from his client's Saudi nationality. Alfozan has been a U.S. permanent resident since 2020, studied computer science at MIT, worked at SAP, Microsoft and Meta, and became a partner at Saudi venture firm RAED Ventures in 2025 before joining OpenAI last July.
The case as charged is narrower than it initially sounded: a hidden recorder is a serious workplace-policy violation regardless of intent, but there's no trade-secret charge, no confirmed leak, and a defense that has not yet had its first real hearing. Alfozan's next court appearance is October 19.