SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The tech consultant convicted in the stabbing death of Cash App founder Bob Lee was sentenced in San Francisco on Tuesday to 16 years to life to prison.
A jury in December 2024 found Nima Momeni guilty of second-degree murder, rejecting the defendant's claim that he had acted in self-defense. He has remained in custody since his arrest nine days after the April 4, 2023, killing.
Before imposing the sentence, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Alexandra Gordon rejected Momeni’s request for a new trial. His attorneys have said they plan to appeal.
Members of Lee’s family addressed the court on Tuesday, including his 18-year-old daughter, Scout Lee, who spoke directly to Momeni.
“You did not just end his life, you ended an entire future built around a man,” she told Momeni, according to media reports.
Momeni, wearing an orange jail jumpsuit, maintained that he acted in self-defense. He told Lee’s family that he understood their loss.
“Unfortunately, we have completely different understandings of what transpired,” Momeni said.
Lee, a renowned tech mogul, was found staggering on a deserted downtown street, dripping a trail of blood and calling for help. Lee, 43, later died at a hospital.
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 said Momeni was angry with Lee for introducing his younger sister to a drug dealer she says 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 realize he had fatally wounded Lee or that Lee was even hurt.
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.
Jurors in the end rejected a charge of murder in the first degree, which required prosecutors prove that Momeni acted deliberately, willfully and with premeditation. Murder in the second degree does not require premeditation.
FILE -Nima Momeni, the man charged in the fatal stabbing of Cash App founder Bob Lee, makes his way into the courtroom at the Hall of Justice for his arraignment in San Francisco, May 2, 2023. (Gabrielle Lurie/San Francisco Chronicle via AP, Pool, File)
