SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — 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 sentence of 16 years to life, rejecting the defendant's claim that he had acted in self defense.
Jurors took seven days to deliver their verdict against Nima Momeni in the April 4, 2023, death of Lee, a beloved tech 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're happy that Nima Momeni will not be on the streets, he no longer has the opportunity to harm anybody else in this world," the victim’s brother, Tim Oliver Lee, told reporters. “We think justice was done here today.”
Mahnaz Tayarani, the mother of the defendant, had tears in her eyes Tuesday as she called the verdict unfair.
“My son is not the person that they think,” she said. “He’s very kind, he’s very loving and respectful and caring.”
Prosecutors said Momeni planned the attack on Lee, driving him to an isolated spot under the Bay Bridge and stabbing him three times, including once to 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 she says gave her GHB and other drugs and then sexually assaulted her.
But Momeni testified on the stand that Lee was the one who attacked him with a knife, angry after the tech consultant chided him about spending more time with his family instead of searching for a strip club that night. Momeni, who studies martial arts, said he didn't realize he had fatally wounded Lee or that Lee was even hurt.
The case has drawn national attention, partly given Lee’s status in the tech world. At first, his death enflamed debate over public safety in San Francisco as X owner Elon Musk took to the social media site to post that “violent crime in SF is horrific and even if attackers are caught, they are often released immediately.”
San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said the verdict showed that 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 murder in the first degree.
Family members of both men faithfully attended the trial, which started Oct. 14. Relatives of the defendant sat on one side of the court room while Lee’s father, brother and ex-wife sat on the other, recoiling at Lee’s autopsy photos and 911 call.
Jurors received the case on Dec. 4 and reached their decision late Monday afternoon, but the court chose to announce the verdict Tuesday morning. The courtroom was crowded with Lee’s family and friends and journalists who have been following the high-profile trial.
Lee had created mobile payment service Cash App and was the chief product officer of the cryptocurrency MobileCoin when he died. He had recently moved to Miami from the San Francisco Bay Area, where his ex-wife Krista Lee lives with their two children, and had returned to California for a visit.
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 brought out the knife, and video of their final encounter is grainy.
The prosecution 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 its handle and Lee’s DNA on the blade.
Two of Momeni’s five attorneys were in court Tuesday, with the others attending by video from Florida.
“This is obviously very disappointing for us,” said Tony Brass, adding that the team would evaluate for an appeal.
Jurors in the end rejected a charge of murder in the first degree, which required prosecutors prove that Momeni acted deliberately, willfully and with premeditation. Murder in the second degree does not require premeditation.
Jurors on Tuesday declined to speak to the press.
The afternoon before the stabbing, Lee and Khazar Momeni had been doing 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 assaulted.
A friend of Lee’s testified Momeni then grilled Lee over the phone about what happened to his sister while at the drug dealer’s apartment. He sent text messages saying that the two men were creeps and sexual predators.
Momeni later hung out with Lee at his sister’s condo until she kicked them out, saying she needed to sleep.
Surveillance video shows the two men leaving Khazar Momeni’s posh condo around 2 a.m. and getting into Nima Momeni’s BMW. Other surveillance footage then shows them getting out of the car near the Bay Bridge, where the stabbing took place.
Momeni testified he stopped his car after going over a pothole that caused Lee to spill the beer he was holding. Momeni said he then cracked 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.
That’s when he says Lee snapped, yelled at him about questioning his parenting skills and pulled out the knife from his jacket pocket, and attacked.
“I was scared for my life,” Momeni said during trial, in testimony that was rambling and contentious.
He said Lee walked away from the encounter, and showed no evidence of being hurt. He didn’t realize Lee had died until the following day, he said.
“I feel awful to his family, to himself,” Momeni said on the stand. “He didn’t deserve it. I don’t think anyone deserved that.”
The prosecution mocked Momeni’s story, pointing out that he never called police to report Lee’s alleged attack or even after he learned Lee had died of stab wounds on the street where he had last seen him.
Prosecutors also showed text messages Khazar Momeni sent her brother, asking where he had dropped off Lee — a question he sidestepped. She sent a text message to Lee checking on him because her brother came “down 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 second-degree murder, not manslaughter.
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Associated Press reporters Christopher Weber in Los Angeles and Haven Daley in San Francisco contributed to this report.
Janie Har, The Associated Press
