Lawyer of arrested OpenAI engineer says allegations are 'wholly out of character,' one-way ticket to Saudi Arabia was 'prepaid'
Fortune Emily Forlini ● Covered by 12 sources
OpenAI's former engineer says he didn't flee; his Saudi trip was already booked. His lawyer says the arrest looks premature, and the case may be more about due process than secrets.
Based on reporting by Fortune, Emily Forlini — read the original for the full story.
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The lawyer for Abdulrahman Alfozan, the former OpenAI employee arrested after a recording device was found at the company’s San Francisco headquarters, is pushing back hard on the public story around the case. William Pernik says the accusations are “wholly out of character” and argues that the one-way flight Alfozan, his wife and child were set to take to Saudi Arabia on Oct. 12 had already been prepaid. Pernik also says his client was “surprised by the search and arrest.”
That trip is now a central detail in the federal complaint, which suggests Alfozan may have been preparing to flee the U.S. The flight’s reason and the date it was booked are still unknown. But Pernik says the jump from a booked family trip to a fleeing suspect is too much, too fast.
The FBI’s case says Alfozan is a Saudi national and a U.S. legal permanent resident since 2020. He has lived and worked in the U.S. since 2011, when he enrolled at MIT in computer science. Pernik says the focus on nationality is misplaced, pointing to years spent living, studying and raising a family in the country.
Alfozan’s résumé is a long one: internships at SAP and Microsoft, five years at Meta, a startup he founded in Silicon Valley, then OpenAI in July 2025. OpenAI says it found the device during a routine security sweep on Sept. 30 and worked with the FBI after that. According to the complaint, the device was planted on Sept. 28, after what investigators say was more than a month of planning using ChatGPT and an internal agentic AI tool. OpenAI says its security program is built to deal with insider threats, cybercriminals and nation states.
For now, nobody has found evidence that Alfozan leaked anything. He was fired by OpenAI on Oct. 9, the same day the FBI arrested him, and his next court date is Oct. 19. Pernik is leaning on the oldest defense in the book: no conclusions, no shortcuts, and a federal recording charge is not the same thing as a trade-secret case.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
This is exactly the sort of case where the internet should sit down and stop inventing a spy novel. A prepaid trip and a Saudi passport do not magically become guilt. Silicon Valley loves talking about trust and due process until the headline gets awkward, then suddenly everyone is a profiler.
Read more about this at: Fortune
