Arrested OpenAI Engineer Seeks Bail, Denies Planning to Flee

The OpenAI software engineer charged with using a hidden recording device in one of the company’s offices asked to be freed from custody and denied his purchase of a one-way plane ticket to his native Saudi Arabia was part of a plan to flee US justice.

In a court filing late Friday, lawyers for Abdulrahman Alfozan said his travel plans were made before he was ensnared in the government’s investigation and requested his release on bail.

“Buying a one-way ticket, then booking the return later, is how Mr. Alfozan has traveled for years,” they wrote. “He has always worked in tech, where he is constantly pulled into last-minute meetings, projects, and other obligations. As a result, he has learned to purchase one-way tickets, because doing so is more cost-effective than changing his flights at the last minute and because he often has to return sooner than expected.”

Alfozan was arrested on Oct. 9, more than a week after staffers at OpenAI discovered an audio recording device planted behind a television in an executive conference room, the Justice Department said on Tuesday. OpenAI said it fired Alfozan the same day as his arrest.

The incident, which has garnered international media attention, is poised to heighten concerns about security at top tech companies at a time when nations are competing aggressively to develop more powerful AI systems.

Read more: OpenAI Staffer Arrested, Charged for Hidden Recording Device

Alfozan, his wife and another family member had booked one-way tickets to Saudi Arabia, via Istanbul, from San Francisco, prosecutors said in a filing a day before he was arrested. At the time, prosecutors were urging the court to keep an arrest warrant and other documents sealed from public view.

“The defendant has the means — and will have an incentive — to flee the United States sooner if he learns about this case before he is arrested,” the government attorneys wrote.

But in Friday’s filing, Alfozan’s lawyers said the timing and circumstances around his travel plans “undercuts the government’s theory.”

He bought the plane ticket on Sept. 13, “seventeen days before OpenAI found the device at issue and twenty-six days before his arrest, when there was no investigation to flee,” they wrote.

Instead, the defense lawyers said, the decision to book an Oct. 12 flight was to accommodate his wife, who could not remain in the US beyond that date under immigration rules after her work authorization ended.

Alfozan’s lawyers said his “entire life is here” in the 15 years since he came to the US to attend Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a freshman. He later worked for Facebook, now Meta Platforms Inc., for about six years and for a startup in the San Francisco Bay Area before joining OpenAI in 2025, they said.

Read more: MI5 Accuses Chinese Institute of Spying on UK’s AI Research

He has been a permanent resident of the US since 2020, has traveled back and forth to Saudi Arabia 20 times in the last five years, and is poised to become a naturalized US citizen soon, according to the filing. Alfozan has a baby son who is a US citizen and he was set to start parental leave on Oct. 19, the lawyers said.

His lawyers also said the Consulate General of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has agreed to support Alfozan’s supervised release in the US under strict conditions, including no international travel without court approval. They said 54 people have written to the court on his behalf, including “a physician, engineers, startup founders, former housemates and friends of more than a decade.”

He is scheduled for an Oct. 19 detention hearing before Magistrate Judge Alex G. Tse in San Francisco federal court.

The case is USA v. Alfozan, 26-mj-71329, US District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco).