Jury convicts Cash App killer

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.

It carries a sentence of 16 years to life, rejecting the defendant’s claim that he had acted in self-defence. Cash App is a digital wallet that generates more than US$15 billion in revenue with reportedly over 57 million users.

The 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 on 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 who 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 realise 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 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, recoiling at Lee’s autopsy photos and 911 call.

Jurors received the case on December 4 and reached their decision late Monday afternoon, but the court chose to announce the verdict on 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 eight-inch paring knife with a roughly four-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 on Tuesday, with the others attending by video from Florida.

“This is obviously very disappointing for us,” said Tony Brass, adding that the team would likely appeal.

The jurors, in the end, rejected a charge of murder in the first degree, which required prosecutors to prove that Momeni acted deliberately, willfully and with premeditation. Murder in the second degree does not require premeditation.

AP