SAN FRANCISCO– A San Francisco jury on Tuesday found a tech consultant guilty of second-degree murder in the stabbing death of Cash App founder Bob Lee, which carries a prison sentence of 16 years to life, and rejected the defendant’s claim that he acted in self-defense had acted.
Jurors took seven days to reach their verdict on Nima Momeni in the April 4, 2023, death of Lee, a beloved technology mogul who was found staggering on a deserted downtown street, dripping a trail of blood and calling for help. Lee, 43, later died at a hospital.
“We believe justice was done here today,” the victim’s brother, Tim Oliver Lee, told reporters. “What matters today is that we have been found guilty and Nima Momeni is going away for a very long time.”
Prosecutors said Momeni planned the attack on Lee, taking him to a secluded spot under the Bay Bridge and stabbing him three times, including once in the heart, with a knife he took from his sister’s kitchen. They say Momeni was angry with Lee for introducing his younger sister to a drug dealer, who she says gave her GHB and other drugs and then sexually abused her.
But Momeni testified on the position that Lee was the one who attacked him with a knife, angry after technology The counselor chided him for spending more time with his family that evening instead of looking for a strip club. Momeni, who studies martial arts, claimed self-defense and said he did not realize he had fatally injured Lee or that Lee was even injured.
The case has attracted national attention, some of it given Lee’s status in the tech world. At first his death ignited public safety debate in San Francisco as X owner Elon Musk took to the social media site to post that “violent crime in SF is heinous and even when attackers are caught, they are often immediately released.”
San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said the verdict showed the killing was a targeted crime and not an example of random lawlessness in the city.
“We are a city committed to accountability, we are a city committed to public safety,” Jenkins told reporters after the hearing.
Momeni, 40, has been in custody since his arrest in April 2023, when he was charged with first-degree murder.
Family members of both men faithfully attended the trial. Mahnaz Tayarani, the defendant’s mother, has been sitting on one side of the courtroom, while Lee’s father, brother and ex-wife have sat on the other side and recoiled from Lee’s autopsy photos and the 911 call.
On Tuesday, Tayarani had tears in her eyes as she called the verdict unfair.
“My son is not the person they think he is,” she said. “He’s very kind, he’s very loving, respectful and caring.”
Receiving jury members the casewhich one started October 14 to December 4. They reached their decision late Monday afternoon, but the court opted to announce the verdict Tuesday morning. The courtroom was packed with Lee’s family, friends and journalists who covered the high-profile trial.
Lee had founded the mobile payment service Cash App and was the Chief Product Officer of the cryptocurrency MobileCoin when he died. He had moved to Miami from the San Francisco Bay Area, where his ex-wife Krista Lee lives with their two children.
Both sides agreed on the sequence of events that led to the two men facing off in the early morning hours of April 4. But there is no independent documentation of what they said to each other or who pulled out the knife, and there is no video of their final fight. encounter is grainy.
The prosecutor said the video showed Momeni stabbing Lee three times. They also said the murder weapon – a nearly 8-inch paring knife with a roughly 4-inch blade – had Momeni’s DNA on the handle and Lee’s DNA on the blade.
Two of Momeni’s five attorneys were in court Tuesday, while the others attended via Zoom from Florida.
“This is obviously very disappointing for us,” said Tony Brass, adding that the team would consider appealing.
Jurors ultimately rejected a charge of first-degree murder, leaving prosecutors to prove that Momeni acted intentionally, deliberately and with premeditation. Second-degree murder does not require that element.
Jurors declined to speak to the press Tuesday.
The afternoon before the stabbing, Lee and Khazar Momeni had been taking drugs and drinking at the apartment of a drug dealer Lee knew. Lee left before Nima Momeni went to pick up his sister, who told him she had been attacked.
A friend of Lee’s testified against Momeni and then told Lee on the phone about what happened to his sister while he was at the drug dealer’s apartment. He sent text messages saying the two men were creeps and sexual predators.
Momeni later hung out with Lee at his sister’s apartment until she kicked them out and told her she needed to sleep.
Surveillance footage shows the two men leaving Khazar Momeni’s house chic apartment around 2am and get into Nima Momeni’s BMW. Other surveillance footage shows them getting out of the car near the Bay Bridge, where the stabbing took place.
Momeni testified he stopped his car after driving over a pothole causing Lee to spill the beer he was holding. Momeni said he then made a joke suggesting Lee should spend the last night of his visit with family instead of trying to find a strip club to keep the party going.
At that point, he said Lee snapped, yelled at him for questioning his parenting skills, pulled the knife from his jacket pocket and attacked.
“I was afraid for my life,” Momeni said during the trial, in testimony incoherent and controversial.
He said Lee walked away from the encounter showing no signs of being injured. He didn’t realize Lee had died until the next day, he said.
“I feel terrible towards his family and towards himself,” Momeni said on the stand. ‘He didn’t deserve it. I don’t think anyone deserved that.”
The Public Prosecution Service scoffed Momeni’s story, pointing said he never called police to report Lee’s alleged attack, or even after learning Lee had died of stab wounds on the street where he last saw him.
Prosecutors also showed text messages that Khazar Momeni had sent her brother, asking where he had dropped Lee off – a question he evaded. She sent one text message to Lee who came to see him because her brother ‘came hard on him’ and to thank him for ‘handling it with class’.
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This story has been updated to clarify that Momeni was found guilty of manslaughter, not manslaughter.
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Associated Press reporters Christopher Weber in Los Angeles and Haven Daley in San Francisco contributed to this report.