A tech consultant has been found guilty of second-degree murder in the stabbing death of Cash App founder Bob Lee.
Jurors delivered the unanimous verdict against Nima Momeni on Tuesday, eight days after they began deliberations.
The trial for Momeni began on October 14 in San Francisco, more than a year after the murder of a beloved tech mogul that shocked the tech community whose members mourned the loss of the entrepreneur they called charismatic and kind. On April 4, 2023, Lee was found staggering on a deserted downtown San Francisco street at 2:30 a.m., dripping a trail of blood and calling for help. The 43-year-old later died at a hospital.
“We think justice was done here today,” the victim’s brother, Tim Oliver Lee, told reporters following the verdict. “What matters today is that we had a guilty verdict and Nima Momeni is going away for a very long time.”
Momeni, 40, had pleaded not guilty in the case so high profile that San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins stepped into the courtroom for part of the closing arguments earlier this month.
The former tech consultant, who has been in custody since his arrest in April 2023, was charged with first-degree murder, but jurors found him guilty of second-degree. He faces 16 years to life in prison.
San Francisco prosecutors argued that Momeni planned the attack and stabbed Lee three times after hearing that Lee’s drug dealer friend plied Momeni’s younger sister with GHB and other drugs then 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 Momeni’s defense attorneys say 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 after making a “bad joke” that upset Lee — and did not realize he had stabbed him.
In his first public statements about the events leading to Lee’s death, Momeni testified in his own defense last month, telling the court that he had joked to Lee that he might want to spend his final night in San Francisco with family rather than trying to find a strip club.
Momeni said Lee pulled out a knife and attacked him, forcing him to defend himself. He said Lee later walked away, showing no signs he was injured. Momeni said he called an attorney when he learned of Lee’s death the following day.
“He’s a big famous guy,” he said on the stand. “I’m just an average joe, an immigrant.”
The prosecution began its closing argument with a 911 call in which Lee could be heard asking repeatedly for help.
Lee’s ex-wife, Krista Lee, cradled her daughter Scout as the 16-year-old wept on her mother’s shoulder. The Lees have two children.
Reinstedt mocked Momeni’s defense as he walked jurors through weeks of evidence.
He said Momeni was furious with Lee for introducing Khazar Momeni, 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.
Then, Momeni 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, Reinstedt said.
“That protectiveness of the defendant’s little sister is what led to all of this,” Reinstedt said.
Surveillance video shows the two men leaving the posh condo of Khazar Momeni around 2 a.m. and getting into Momeni’s BMW. Other surveillance 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 it was then that he cracked the 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 out of his jacket pocket, Momeni said. He said Lee later walked away, showing no signs he was injured.
“I was scared for my life,” Momeni said in testimony last month that was at times rambling and contentious.
Reinstedt said Momeni’s story made no sense given Lee’s peaceful nature. He said Momeni 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.
The prosecutor said the puncture wounds were clean, clear and deep, and not the result of any kind of self-defense tussle, he said. Just about all of the DNA — 99 percent — found on the handle of the knife belonged to Momeni, the prosecutor said.
Video of the two men by the bridge is grainy, but Reinstedt said it clearly showed Momeni’s figure lunging repeatedly at Lee. There was no deflecting and redirecting of any knife in Lee’s hand, he said.
Reinstedt also showed video of Momeni and Lee leaving the condo, Lee’s jacket flapping to show there was no knife hidden inside.
On Tuesday morning, defense attorney Saam Zangeneh during closing that prosecutors have not presented the whole truth to jurors, omitting details and failing to investigate avenues that would not help their cause.
“The government’s whole case rests on motive,” he said. “Because without motive, without a story as to why my client would have a knife in his pocket leaving his sister’s apartment, this story doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t add up.”
Zangeneh did not dwell on details of the attack, but instead attacked the credibility of one of Lee’s friends who testified that hours before the stabbing, Momeni grilled Lee over the phone about what happened to his sister while at the drug dealer’s apartment.
He also replayed surveillance video showing that Lee had been angry at one point, and not the peaceful “teddy bear” family and friends described him to be. He said Lee was on a multiday binge of alcohol, cocaine and ketamine and that toxicology reports downplayed just how much was in his system.
Zangeneh questioned why the old “beat-up” paring knife used in the stabbing was not introduced into evidence so jurors could see it in detail. He suggested Lee may have brought the knife along in order to snort more cocaine, or that it may have come from someone else’s kitchen.
He said Lee and Momeni were friendly and on good terms when they left his sister’s condo, and that Momeni was upset with the drug dealer, and not with Lee.