Prosecutors had previously cited one way tickets from San Francisco to Saudi Arabia via Istanbul booked for Oct. 12 for Alfozan, his wife and another relative as evidence that he posed a flight risk. In a Friday court filing seeking bail, Alfozan's lawyers said he bought the tickets on Sept. 13, 17 days before OpenAI discovered the recording device, and that the Oct. 12 departure date matched the day his wife was required to leave the US after her work authorization expired.
Alfozan, who is also a venture partner at Saudi firm RAED Ventures alongside Prince Khalid bin Bader Al Saud, faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine on a federal wiretapping charge prosecuted with the Justice Department's Counterintelligence and Export Control Section. Prosecutors allege he hid an encrypted recorder wrapped in toilet paper in a television USB port around Sept. 28 after using an internal AI tool to look up executive meeting rooms and a ChatGPT account tied to his wife to help build the device.