Nima Momeni, the former tech consultant at the center of the Bob Lee murder case, has been found guilty of the Cash App founder’s death.
On Tuesday, after deliberating for seven days, a jury acquitted Momeni of the charge of 1st-degree murder but found him guilty of 2nd-degree murder, NBC reports. He faces 16 years to life in prison, as a result.
Lee, who was 43 at the time of his death, was found bleeding from multiple stab wounds on the streets of San Francisco one morning last April. He later died at a hospital.
In the days after his death, San Francisco’s elite seized on the murder as an opportunity to decry local crime, with many presuming that the tech executive had been killed by a low-level criminal. Elon Musk immediately used Lee’s death to make a political point, posting on social media that “violent crime in SF is horrific and even if attackers are caught, they are often released immediately.”
However, it was soon discovered that Lee was actually attacked by Momeni—another white-collar tech worker. Prior to his arrest, Momeni ran a company called Expand IT, based in the Bay Area, which was described as an IT consulting business.
Prosecutors allege that the killing took place after a dispute between Lee and Momeni over Momeni’s sister, Khazar Momeni, whom Lee also knew. Prosecutors claim that Momeni was under the impression that Khazar had been sexually assaulted by a man that Lee introduced her to.
On the night of the murder, Lee and Momeni spent time at Khazar’s apartment, before leaving in Nima’s BMW around 2 AM. Prosecutors say that Momeni then drove Lee to an isolated spot and stabbed him three times, including once in the heart.
Momeni’s lawyers told a different story, claiming that Momeni had acted in self-defense and that it was Lee who, in a drug-fueled state, reacted poorly to a joke Momeni had made at his expense and pulled a knife on him. Momeni claimed that a fight had ensued, with both men struggling for the knife, after which Lee left the vehicle. He told the jury that he did not realize that Lee had been stabbed.
“We think justice was done here today,” Lee’s brother, Tim Oliver Lee, was quoted as saying. “What matters today is that we had a guilty verdict and Nima Momeni is going away for a very long time.”
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