SUMMARYA federal court kept former OpenAI engineer Abdulrahman Alfozan in custody after prosecutors said he bugged a top-secret conference room to steal company secrets. The FBI found a folder on his iPhone labeled “Saudi Gov Docs,” and investigators said he had communicated with a member of the Saudi royal family while seeking to move back to Saudi Arabia. Prosecutors argued the alleged spying could have benefited either his own business interests or the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
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.