A federal judge on Monday ordered a former OpenAI engineer who was accused of planting a hidden recording device at the company to remain in custody without bail, after prosecutors said in a filing that the employee’s ties to the government of Saudi Arabia were extensive.
At a hearing in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, Magistrate Judge Alex G. Tse said the engineer, Abdulrahman Alfozan, 35, a Saudi national, would stay in jail while he awaited trial. Mr. Alfozan’s lawyers had submitted a letter showing that the Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles offered to pay the full amount of his bail. Prosecutors also said in a filing on Sunday that a Saudi military official had paid for Mr. Alfozan’s wife and infant son to leave the United States the day after his arrest.
The Saudi offer to cover Mr. Alfozan’s bail was a “blank check,” Judge Tse said. “Even if I set it at $10 million, they are going to pay the entire bond,” he said.
The hearing followed OpenAI’s disclosure this month that it had found the recording device in one of its offices in San Francisco. The company traced the device to Mr. Alfozan, it said, adding that he appeared to be planning to place more in sensitive areas of its offices. He was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on Oct. 9 and charged with trying to secretly record conversations using an electronic device.
The incident has fueled concerns about the security of leading artificial intelligence labs like OpenAI, which create advanced A.I. models that are among the most closely guarded secrets in the U.S. technology industry. Saudi Arabia has been investing heavily in A.I., including by building data centers and working with U.S. and Chinese tech giants.
(The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in 2023, accusing them of copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems. The two companies have denied those claims.)
Prosecutors said in their filing that Mr. Alfozan’s motive might have been to enrich himself or to aid a foreign government, “or both.” They said their investigation was continuing and “may result in additional serious charges.”
The Saudi Embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for comment.
At the hearing, William Pernik, one of Mr. Alfozan’s lawyers, said his client had deep roots in the United States. Mr. Alfozan was “weeks away from achieving every immigrant’s dream” of U.S. citizenship, he said.
“If he really was an agent of a foreign government, why wouldn’t he just abscond right away?” Mr. Pernik asked.
Prosecutors said in their filing on Sunday that Mr. Alfozan had been in frequent contact with a member of the Saudi royal family who tried to recruit him to work in Saudi Arabia. In May, the royal wrote to Mr. Alfozan, saying that “Saudi needs you more” than the United States. Mr. Alfozan replied, “100,” according to prosecutors.
But Mr. Alfozan said he would not leave OpenAI until he collected the company stock he had been promised, worth $2.2 million when he was hired, according to the filing.
In a letter to his lawyers, dated Wednesday, the Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles said it was ready “to cover the full amount of the bail bond” required for his release. Mr. Alfozan’s lawyers filed the letter as part of the request that he be released.
Mr. Alfozan’s wife, identified as Lujain Alassaf, and son left the United States about 36 hours after his arrest, on a one-way, business-class flight to Doha, Qatar, which was booked and paid for by a Saudi military official, according to the filing. An earlier one-way flight to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, booked and paid for by the Saudi government, was canceled, prosecutors said.
On Monday, Nas Yasmin, a lawyer representing Mr. Alfozan, said the military official who had booked the flight was Ms. Alassaf’s brother-in-law, a Saudi naval officer. Mr. Pernik said the flight had been paid for with a “personal card.”
Mr. Alfozan’s wife, whose U.S. student visa recently expired, told F.B.I. agents that her husband had planned to return to OpenAI after two months in Saudi Arabia but that he, too, intended to eventually move there permanently, according to the prosecutors. In court, Mr. Alfozan’s lawyers said his wife had recently obtained a U.S. visitor’s visa with plans to return.
After searching Mr. Alfozan’s home and phone, investigators found electronic parts similar to those in the planted device, as well as photos of a different concealed device and photos of technology in another conference room used for sensitive meetings, according to the filing.
Before Monday’s hearing, Mr. Pernik submitted more than 50 letters of support for Mr. Alfozan to the court, along with records showing that his client was scheduled for a naturalization interview next month. Mr. Alfozan had also been scheduled to begin two months of paternity leave from OpenAI in October.
Prosecutors argued that the Saudi government’s help was itself a reason for concern. Saudi Arabia has no extradition treaty with the United States, they noted, and they pointed to a case in San Francisco in which, they said, the Saudis helped arrange a next-day flight to Saudi Arabia for an employee of Twitter (now X) after the company confronted him in 2015 about gaining access user data. The employee, Ali Alzabarah, was later charged with spying for Saudi Arabia but has not been arrested. Another employee involved in the scheme, Ahmad Abouammo, was convicted in 2022.
A preliminary hearing in Mr. Alfozan’s case is scheduled for Nov. 6.