Nima Momeni, the man charged in the fatal stabbing of Lee, makes his way into the courtroom for his arraignment in San Francisco, on May 2, 2023. Momeni faces from 16 years to life in prison when he’s sentenced, according to Jenkins. — San Francisco Chronicle via AP
An acquaintance of Cash App founder Bob Lee was found guilty of murdering him on a downtown San Francisco street in April 2023 and faces the possibility of life in prison.
A jury rejected Nima Momeni’s claim that he had stabbed Lee in self-defence after Lee, high on drugs and sleep-deprived, tried to attack him with a knife. Tuesday’s verdict follows about a week of jury deliberations and a high-profile trial that featured more than a month of witness testimony.
Lee was revered by the Bay Area’s tech community as a master coder who helped develop Google’s Android and Square’s Cash App before becoming a top executive at MobileCoin. The slaying of the 43-year-old father of two drew nationwide attention and at first fueled speculation that he was a random victim of violence in a city falling into post-pandemic lawlessness.
The narrative shifted sharply when police arrested Momeni, a fellow technology entrepreneur who knew Lee, and accused him of a premeditated attack.
Second-degree murder
The 12-person jury rejected first-degree murder and instead convicted Momeni of a lesser charge, second-degree murder, finding that the slaying was intentional but unplanned. Momeni faces from 16 years to life in prison when he’s sentenced, according to San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins.
Momeni’s mother sat stoically in court as the verdict was read. His Miami-based attorneys weren’t in court, but were plugged into the proceeding on video conferencing.
“We’re happy with the result today,” Lee’s brother, Timothy, said after the verdict. “He’s going to be in prison for a long time.”
The verdict was also hailed by Jenkins, who won election to a four-year term in November, in the middle of the trial, after being appointed to her post in 2022 by Mayor London Breed, who was recalled by voters.
‘Elon Musk’
“We all know that after Bob Lee was murdered, Elon Musk took to Twitter to make an effort to really shame San Francisco and to make it seem like this was about lawlessness in San Francisco and about what’s going on out in our streets, and we knew it was something different,” Jenkins said after the verdict.
The judge is yet to set a sentencing date. Jenkins said it could be a couple of months out.
At trial, prosecutors had argued that Momeni was an “overprotective, wanna-be tough guy” who stabbed Lee following an argument over Momeni’s sister, Khazar.
In his defence, Momeni told the jury Lee was the aggressor. He said that during a late night of socialising in April 2023 after they’d first met two days earlier, Lee became enraged over a “bad joke” while binging on drugs, pulled a knife out of his jacket pocket and took a swing, before Momeni grabbed his arm and redirected the blade at his upper chest.
Momeni ‘afraid’
“I was afraid for my life,” Momeni testified under questioning from his own lawyer as he gave a blow-by-blow account of the physical confrontation that he says ended with Lee “casually” walking away, appearing to be uninjured, and Momeni throwing the knife over a fence. Lee died in the hospital hours after he called 911 for help and was found bleeding from multiple wounds, including one that pierced his heart.
Witnesses recounted a party that Lee attended and left before Khazar Momeni was allegedly given a date rape drug, as well as a phone call in which Nima Momeni questioned Lee about his sister “getting naked”. Prosecutors claimed Momeni took a knife from his sister’s kitchen to kill Lee, while defence lawyers argued that Momeni was mad at the party host, not Lee.
Khazar, in her own testimony, sought to defend her brother but acknowledged on the stand that her memory was foggy because she’d been on a drug bender before and after Lee’s death. The jury also saw an exchange of texts between the Momeni siblings after the incident and heard from dueling forensics experts about DNA testing of the knife and how Lee was wounded.
‘Crafted story’
In their closing argument, prosecutors called Momeni’s defence “a carefully crafted story”.
“The defendant murdered Bob or this is the biggest coincidence in the history of coincidences,” said Omid Talai, an assistant district attorney. “Nima Momeni must have been struck by lightning 30 times here.”
Defence attorney Saam Zanganeh told jurors “motive is everything” and that the prosecution’s version of events doesn’t add up, including that Momeni deliberately took Lee to a “dark and secluded place” to kill him.
“This is in the heart of a residential-commercial area,” he said. “This is the heart of San Francisco.” – Bloomberg
