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IT consultant and tech entrepreneur Nima Momeni was found guilty of murder on Monday in the stabbing death of Cash App co-founder Bob Lee. The jury in San Francisco announced on Tuesday that they had determined Momeni committed the 2023 murder over a personal dispute.
Momeni was found not guilty on the charge of first-degree murder, but the jury did feel he had committed second-degree murder. Lee, 43, was killed early in the morning in the Rincon Hill of San Francisco on April 4, 2023. He had been stabbed in the chest and called 911 at around 2:35 a.m. He died after being transported to a hospital. Several drugs, including alcohol, ketamine and cocaine, were present in Bob Lee’s system at the time of his death, according to a toxicology report.
The BBC reports that prosecutors stated during the trial that Nima Momeni stabbed Lee because he was angry at him for introducing his sister, Khazar Momeni, to a man who gave her GHB, AKA the date rape drug.
UPI reports Momeni, who knew Bob Lee, had driven the Cash App co-founder to a secluded area and stabbed him with a four-inch kitchen knife, including one time in the heart.
Momeni’s attorneys claimed he acted in self-defense and was scared for his life after Lee tried to attack him with a knife over a “bad joke.” He also claimed that he did not know Lee had been stabbed in the alleged scuffle.
“We are victims of drug abuse,” Momeni’s mother, Mahnaz Tayarani, said on Tuesday. “I know my son… This is not a fair trial.”
“I feel awful to his family, to himself,” Nima Momeni said on the stand during the trial. “He didn’t deserve it. I don’t think anyone deserved that.”
The jury, which had been asked to consider first-degree murder with an enhancement of using a deadly weapon, took seven days to reach their guilty verdict. Bob Lee’s brother Oliver said after the jury’s decision that his family was “happy with the result.”
“We’re happy that Nima Momeni won’t be on the streets, no longer has the opportunity to harm anyone else in this world,” said Oliver Lee.
The 40-year-old Momeni, who had been running his company Expand IT, an IT consulting business, at the time of the murder, now faces a sentence of 16 years to life in prison.