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 reach a verdict against Nima Momeni in the April 4, 2023 death of Lee, a beloved tech mogul who was discovered staggering on a deserted downtown street, dripping blood and calling for help. Lee, 43, later died in the hospital.
“We’re relieved that Nima Momeni will no longer be on the streets; he no longer has the opportunity to harm anyone else in this world,” the victim’s brother, Tim Oliver Lee, told reporters. “We think justice was done here today.”
The defendant’s mother, Mahnaz Tayarani, cried on Tuesday as she described the verdict as unfair.
“My son is not the person that they think,” she told me. “He’s very kind, he’s very loving and respectful and caring.”
Prosecutors said Momeni planned the attack on Lee, driving him to a remote location beneath the Bay Bridge and stabbing him three times, including once in the heart, with a knife he stole from his sister’s kitchen.
They claim Momeni was angry with Lee for introducing his younger sister to a drug dealer who allegedly gave her GHB and other drugs before sexually assaulting her.
However, Momeni testified on the stand that Lee was the one who attacked him with a knife, enraged after the tech consultant chastised him for spending more time with his family rather than looking for a strip club that night.
Momeni, who studies martial arts, claimed he had no idea he had fatally wounded Lee or that he was even injured.
The case has received national attention, thanks in part to Lee’s prominence in the technology industry. At first, his death sparked a debate about public safety in San Francisco, with X owner Elon Musk posting on the social media site that “violent crime in SF is horrific, and even if attackers are caught, they are often released immediately.”
San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins stated that the verdict demonstrated that the killing was a targeted crime rather than an example of random lawlessness in the city.
“We are a city committed to accountability, a city committed to public safety,” Jenkins told reporters following the hearing.
Momeni, 40, has been in custody since April 2023, when he was arrested and charged with murder in the first degree.
Family members of both men faithfully attended the trial, which began on October 14. Relatives of the defendant sat on one side of the courtroom, while Lee’s father, brother, and ex-wife sat on the other, horrified by Lee’s autopsy photos and 911 call.
Jurors heard the case on December 4 and reached a decision late Monday afternoon, but the court decided to announce the verdict Tuesday morning. The courtroom was crowded with Lee’s family, friends, and journalists who had been covering the high-profile trial.
Lee had founded the mobile payment service Cash App and was the chief product officer for the cryptocurrency MobileCoin when he died. He had recently relocated to Miami from the San Francisco Bay Area, where his ex-wife Krista Lee and their two children reside, and had returned to California for a visit.
Both parties agreed on the sequence of events that led to the two men clashing in the early hours of April 4. However, there is no independent documentation of what they said to each other or who pulled out the knife, and the footage of their final encounter is grainy.
The prosecution claimed the video showed Momeni stabbing Lee three times. They also claimed that the murder weapon, a nearly 8-inch paring knife with a roughly 4-inch blade, contained Momeni’s DNA on the handle and Lee’s DNA on the blade.
Two of Momeni’s five attorneys appeared in court on Tuesday, with the others watching via videoconference from Florida.
“This is obviously very disappointing for us,” said Tony Brass, adding that the team would consider filing an appeal.
Jurors ultimately rejected a charge of murder in the first degree, which required prosecutors to show that Momeni acted deliberately, willfully, and with premeditation. Murder in the second degree is not premeditated.
On Tuesday, jurors declined to speak to the press.
The afternoon before the stabbing, Lee and Khazar Momeni were doing drugs and drinking at the apartment of a drug dealer Lee knew. Lee left before Nima Momeni arrived to pick up his sister, who told him she had been assaulted.
A friend of Lee testified. Momeni then confronted Lee over the phone about what happened to his sister at the drug dealer’s apartment. He sent text messages claiming 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, claiming she needed to sleep.
Surveillance video shows the two men leaving Khazar Momeni’s posh condo around 2 a.m. and entering Nima Momeni’s BMW. Other surveillance footage then shows them getting out of their car near the Bay Bridge, where the stabbing occurred.
Momeni testified that he stopped his car after hitting a pothole, which caused Lee to spill the beer he was holding. Momeni then joked that Lee should spend the final night of his visit with family rather than trying to find a strip club to keep the party going.
That’s when he claims Lee snapped, yelled at him for questioning his parenting abilities, pulled a knife from his jacket pocket and attacked.
“I was scared for my life,” Momeni testified at trial, in rambling and contentious terms.
He claimed Lee walked away from the encounter and showed no signs of injury. He didn’t realize Lee had died until the next day, he explained.
“I feel awful for his family and himself,” Momeni said on the stand. “He did not deserve it.” “I do not believe anyone deserved that.”
The prosecution mocked Momeni’s story, pointing out that he never reported Lee’s alleged attack to police, even after learning Lee had died of stab wounds on the street where he last saw him.
Prosecutors also presented text messages sent by Khazar Momeni to her brother, asking where he had dropped off Lee — a question he avoided. She texted Lee to check on him after her brother came “down hard” on him and to thank him for “handling it with class.”
This story has been updated to clarify that Momeni was found guilty of second-degree murder, not manslaughter.
