The Scene
Sebastian Heyneman’s stint as a suspected terrorist started in the most Davos way possible: hunting for something to eat.
The 31-year-old entrepreneur and first-time World Economic Forum attendee was scouting for a salmon roll at a party hosted by Digital Life Design, a media and conference business, Tuesday night at the Grandhotel Belvédère. He set the prototype of the machine he hopes to sell— a verification device to fraud-proof money transfers — on a pillar. When he came back it was gone. Hotel security was waiting to tell him the police had some questions.
“I’m the idiot in this,” Heyneman, founder of startup Verdico, readily admits. “It’s a black cube with hot glue blobs and wires coming out the side.” He left it unattended in a small-town police state. What followed was 13 hours in the custody of the fatigue-clad but unfailingly polite Swiss police we’ve spent all week thanking in broken German.
Semafor reviewed his release ticket from the police, which said that Heyneman was “noticed within WEF 2026 security zone with a tech device that seemed suspicious and its use for illegal purposes could not be excluded.”
We reached out to local police and did not receive a response Thursday evening.
Here’s his story, which he told me over the phone on Thursday, lightly edited for clarity.
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The View From A Davos Jail Cell
At the Belvedere Hotel’s security, there’s this detective, mid-40s, Swiss, who searches me — extremely thorough. They handcuffed me and put me in the back of a BMW. I meet [another officer] who has the best English.
The jail is right next to the train station. They bring out a fingerprint scanner and the guy tells me, “I want to see if you’re an international spy.” I asked for my Lunesta pills because I have insomnia, and he said, “I can’t give it to you because I don’t know if it’s cyanide.”
We walk into the office and there are two cells. Everything is all painted white — very antiseptic and Swiss. There’s a metal bed drilled into the concrete, and a toilet-sink combination. They said it was spring water, so the water was good to drink. The food was phenomenal. They brought it from the hospital, apparently — chicken lasagna, amazing. The only complaint I have was the smell.
The next morning they bring this guy named Chris, a technical expert. He says, “Come out here, explain your tech.” I do my pitch. I say, “Look, I’m not a very good hardware engineer, but I’m a great user of AI.” I was one of the top users of [AI coding tool] Cursor last year. I did 43,000 agent runs and generated 25 billion tokens.
We open my machine. Chris and I go line by line through the code. I don’t know the language that the code was written in because it was written in AI, so Chris actually explained the code to me. They come back and they say, “You’re free to go. You can take all your stuff with you, but you’re banned from Davos between now and 6 pm on Friday.”
I’m going to apply for another hotel badge next year.
One Follow-Up Text
