A San Francisco jury found tech consultant Nima Momeni guilty of second-degree murder in the stabbing death of Cash App founder Bob Lee.
Jurors took seven days to deliver their verdict against 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.
Prosecutors argued that Momeni took Lee’s life on the 300 block of Main Street in the ritzy Rincon Hill neighborhood after hearing that his drug-dealing friend plied his younger sister, Khazar, with GHB and other drugs and sexually assaulted her.
‘One person called 911 pleading for help, saying somebody stabbed me,’ said Dane Reinstedt, assistant district attorney, adding that the other person never called police or told anyone what happened that night until the trial.
But defense attorneys claimed Lee was on a multi-day drug bender of cocaine and ketamine that made him agitated and violent, and that he attacked the defendant with a knife.
They said Momeni was forced to use his Krav Maga martial arts skills in the early morning hours of April 4, 2023, after ‘making a ‘bad joke’ that upset Lee – and did not realize he had stabbed him.
Lee’s brother Timothy Oliver Lee said the family was satisfied with the verdict, reported CBS News Bay Area.
‘We we’re happy with the result today. We’re happy that Nima Momeni won’t be on the streets, no longer has the opportunity to harm anyone else in this world,’ he said. ‘The verdict of murder two will put him away for a long time.’
A conviction of murder in the second degree carries a sentence of 16 years to life in this case.
Lee had created 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.
The assistant district attorney mocked Momeni’s defense as he walked jurors through evidence from the trial that began on October 14.
He said Momeni was furious with Lee for introducing Khazar, with whom he was friends, to a drug dealer who gave her GHB, known as a date-rape drug, hours before the stabbing.
They say Momeni grilled Lee earlier in the evening about what happened to his sister at the drug dealer’s apartment, and sent text messages saying that the two men were creeps and sexual predators.
Momeni then met up with Lee at his sister’s condo, took a paring knife from her kitchen set, drove Lee to a secluded area by the Bay Bridge and stabbed him three times, including a fatal blow through his heart, on a dimly lit street, Reinstedt said.
‘That protectiveness of the defendant’s little sister is what led to all of this,’ he said.
Momeni had learned “his little sister, the person he’s closest to in the world, was given date rape drugs and sexually assaulted. If that’s not a basis to kill someone, I don’t know what is,’ prosecutor Reinstedt said.
The puncture wounds were clean, clear and deep, and not the result of any kind of self-defense tussle, according to the prosecutor. He said 99 percent of the DNA on the handle of the knife belonged to Momeni.
Surveillance video shows the two men leaving the posh condo of Khazar Momeni around 2 a.m. and getting into Momeni’s BMW.
Other footage then shows them getting out of the car in an isolated section of the city by the Bay Bridge.
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 his last night visiting the city with family instead of trying to find a strip club to keep the party going.
That’s when Lee suddenly pulled a knife, Momeni said. He said Lee later walked away, showing no signs he was injured.
‘I was scared for my life,’ Momeni said in earlier testimony that was at times rambling and contentious. ‘I had to defend myself.’
Reinstedt played Lee’s 911 call from April 4, 2023, that recorded his final words.
Jurors could hear him begging an emergency dispatcher for help before he collapsed on Main Street in a pool of blood.
Lee’s devastated daughter, Scout Lee, 16, could be heard sobbing as harrowing video footage of her dying father was played to the jury.