Accused OpenAI spy had folder called “Saudi Gov Docs,” FBI says

On Monday, a court granted the US government’s request to deny release of a former OpenAI engineer accused of bugging a top-secret conference room to steal the frontier lab’s secrets. In a court filing Sunday, US attorney Craig Missakian argued that Abdulrahman Alfozan must continue to be detained while the US makes its case that Alfozan brazenly spied on OpenAI, either for his own personal business gain or to benefit the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Evidence showed that Alfozan had been chatting with a member of the KSA royal family on WhatsApp, while pursuing opportunities to permanently move back to Saudi Arabia during the country’s biggest AI push yet, the government argued.

Shortly before his arrest, the FBI found he accessed a folder called “Saudi Gov Docs” on his iPhone, where he also allegedly stored photos of a second bug he planted in the offices. With so much evidence against him, Alfozan—a Saudi national and US permanent legal resident—is a flight risk with seemingly endless support from the Saudi government, Missakian alleged. The FBI arrested Alfozan days before he could hop a plane, Missakian said.

The US attorney noted that Alfozan had already booked a one-way ticket for him, his wife, and their baby to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia’s capital. That ticket was allegedly “paid for by the Saudi government.” Following his arrest, his wife and son booked a sooner flight and immediately left the US without him. Once again, the US found “a member of the Saudi military booked and paid for yet another one-way ticket for the defendant’s wife and son, this one business class to Doha, Qatar.” After receiving “significant compensation from a decade of high-tech employment in the Bay Area,” Alfozan has “ample resources” to run away to Saudi Arabia, the US government alleged.

He also has “at least two bank accounts in Saudi Arabia,” the government said. To support their request to detain Alfozan, the government pointed to a case where former Twitter employees were charged with spying for the Saudi government. Charges are still pending against one of the ex-Twitter staffers, Ali Alzabarah, the US said, partly because “a Saudi foreign official” helped “coordinate a next-day flight to Saudi Arabia” shortly after Twitter confronted him.