{"id":146981,"date":"2026-01-23T23:15:24","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T23:15:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/146981\/"},"modified":"2026-01-23T23:15:24","modified_gmt":"2026-01-23T23:15:24","slug":"san-francisco-tech-bro-arrested-in-davos-for-leaving-prototype-device-that-looked-like-bomb-unattended","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/146981\/","title":{"rendered":"San Francisco tech bro arrested in Davos for leaving prototype device that looked like bomb unattended"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A tech founder from <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/01\/23\/us-news\/san-francisco-mob-destroys-waymo-self-driving-car\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">San Francisco<\/a> was detained and jailed in Davos after he accidentally left a device authorities thought resembled a bomb at a luxury hotel hosting <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/01\/23\/us-news\/fervid-foes-trump-and-gavin-newsom-were-palling-around-backstage-at-davos-report\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the World Economic Forum.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Sebastian Heyneman, 31, traveled to the Swiss town to pitch his product to the global elite but instead ended up behind bars for 13 hours as police probed him on suspicion of terrorism.<\/p>\n<p>It was the tech entrepreneur\u2019s first <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/01\/22\/us-news\/trump-unveils-board-of-peace-during-signing-ceremony-in-davos\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">time at Davos,<\/a> where he planned to promote his startup developing an anti-fraud device for money transfers.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><img style=\"aspect-ratio:1.08474576;display:block\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-modal-image=\"38267008\" width=\"640\" height=\"590\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/sebastian-heyneman-i-m-stupid-119533028.jpg\" alt=\"Sebastian Heyneman, smiling and wearing red sunglasses and a black beanie, against a purple backdrop with &quot;DAVOS 2026&quot; visible.\" class=\"wp-image-38267008\"  \/>Tech founder Sebastian Heyneman, 31, was jailed in Davos after a mixup at the World Economic Forum. Sebastian Heyneman<\/p>\n<p><img style=\"aspect-ratio:1.41632089;display:block\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-modal-image=\"38267007\" width=\"836\" height=\"590\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/sebastian-heyneman-i-m-stupid-119533029.jpg\" alt=\"A black rectangular box with a silver knob, a multi-colored wire and a 1.5-inch RGB OLED module.\" class=\"wp-image-38267007\"  \/>The entrepreneur intended to show off his anti-fraud device \u2014\u00a0but instead ended up behind bars for 13 hours. Sebastian Heyneman<\/p>\n<p>When he got up to score a free salmon roll from a nearby party, he left behind one of his prototypes \u2014 a small black box with loose wires and a motherboard \u2014 in the lobby of the Grandhotel Belv\u00e9d\u00e8re, <a href=\"https:\/\/sfstandard.com\/2026\/01\/22\/tech-dude-davos-bomb-lookalike-device\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">according to the San Francisco Standard<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>He returned to find the black box gone and a bartender pointing to two burly security guards standing by the door.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Within hours he was detained by Swiss authorities, who fingerprinted him and checked his identity against a database of international spies.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m the idiot in this,\u201d Heyneman <a href=\"https:\/\/www.semafor.com\/article\/01\/22\/2026\/an-entrepreneurs-13-hours-in-davos-jail-the-food-was-phenomenal\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">told Semafor<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s a black cube with hot glue blobs and wires coming out the side.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Authorities found the device to be a potential threat.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\tThe California Post is coming soon. Sign up for updates.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p class=\"inline-module__cta\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGet in early. Be the first to know about launch and home delivery.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\tThanks for signing up!\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was such a comedy of errors,\u201d\u00a0Heyneman told the Standard, adding that he had \u201can equipment case that looks kind of like a gun case.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Detectives and bomb squad personnel arrived and the tech founder was handcuffed.<\/p>\n<p>For the next 13 hours, he was held by \u201cpolite\u201d Swiss police, he told Semafor.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI thought it would be completely fine, because it\u2019s a piece of plastic, which in retrospect is completely idiotic,\u201d Heyneman told Standard. \u201cI\u2019m not malicious, but I\u2019m very stupid.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A tech founder from San Francisco was detained and jailed in Davos after he accidentally left a device&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":146982,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[7,70744,101,103,102,104,106,105,3586],"class_list":{"0":"post-146981","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-davos","10":"tag-san-francisco","11":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","12":"tag-san-francisco-news","13":"tag-sf","14":"tag-sf-headlines","15":"tag-sf-news","16":"tag-us-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146981\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}