Global Courant 2023-04-15 04:11:47
The tech consultant charged with the murder of Cash App founder Bob Lee planned the attack, drove the victim to a secluded spot and stabbed him over an apparent dispute involving the suspect’s sister, prosecutors said in a court document released Friday.
The motion to hold 38-year-old Nima Momeni without bail is the first official account of what may have led to Lee’s April 4 stabbing in a deserted section of downtown San Francisco. Momeni was arrested Thursday and appeared in a San Francisco courtroom Friday but did not enter a plea.
He will now be arraigned on April 25.
The judge at Friday’s brief hearing agreed to hold Momeni in jail without bail. If convicted, he faces 26 years to life in prison, District Attorney Brooke Jenkins’ office said.
Momeni appeared in court in an orange sweatshirt and pants. He spoke only to say, “Yes, Your Honor,” when the judge asked if he would agree to waive his right to a speedy trial.
Bob Lee can be seen in this undated photo. (Handout/MobileCoin)
His younger sister Khazar Elyassnia sat with her husband, prominent San Francisco plastic surgeon Dino Elyassnia, and two other family members in the front row at the hearing. As Momeni entered the courtroom, an elderly woman made a heart sign with her hands and Momeni, who was wearing a face mask, smiled and nodded at them.
The family refused to talk to reporters.
Momeni is represented by Burlingame-based lawyer Paula Canny, who was on vacation and whose brother Robert Canny, also a lawyer, appeared in her place on Friday. “The facts of what did or didn’t happen will come out over time,” he told reporters after the hearing.
On Thursday, San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott announced Momeni’s arrest, saying the two men knew each other but declined to elaborate on their connection. He also declined to disclose a possible motive.
‘Victim left to slowly die’
The motion to detain Momeni is based on surveillance video and testimony from a friend who was with Lee the afternoon and evening before he died. The events that unfolded began the day before, when the friend, along with Lee and Khazar Elyassnia, got drunk together in someone else’s apartment, according to the document.
The friend met Khazar Elyassnia several years earlier through Lee.
That night, the friend said that he and Lee had left the apartment. They then went to Lee’s hotel room, without Khazar Elyassnia, and noted a conversation in which Momeni questioned Lee about whether his younger sister was “using drugs or anything inappropriate,” according to the document. Lee assured Momeni that nothing inappropriate had happened. It is not clear whether the conversation took place in person or over the phone.
Flowers sit on a tree near where Lee was fatally stabbed in San Francisco on April 6. (Jeff Chiu/The Associated Press)
The boyfriend and Lee broke up around 12:30 p.m. A few minutes later, Lee can be seen on video surveillance entering the Millennium Tower, where public records show that the Elyassnias own a unit. The video also shows Lee and Momeni exiting the building shortly after 2 a.m. and driving off in Momeni’s BMW.
Prosecutors say Momeni drove to a dark and secluded place and attacked Lee with a kitchen knife, stabbing him three times, including once in the heart. He then rushed off “and allowed the victim to die slowly,” the motion said. Police found a knife with a 10 cm blade at the scene.
The motion also references a text Khazar Elyassnia sent to Lee to check up on him because her brother was “comeing hard on you” and to thank him for “handling class.”
Khazar Elyassnia, left, faces the Hall of Justice in San Francisco on Friday. (Olga Rodriguez/The Associated Press)
Robert Canny did not return an email and phone call requesting comment on the details released by the prosecutor’s office. Dino Elyassnia did not answer emails and messages left in his practice seeking comment. Khazar Elyassnia was not immediately available for comment.
Lee’s stabbing shocked the tech industry, with friends and former colleagues mourning a man they described as brilliant, gregarious and a loving father to his two children.
Police found Lee with stab wounds at 2:30 a.m. on April 4 in the Rincon Hill neighborhood of downtown. He died in a hospital.
Lee is known for creating the widely used mobile payment service Cash App while working as the chief technology officer of the payments company Square, now known as Block.
On his LinkedIn profile, Momeni describes himself as an “IT consultant/entrepreneur”, as well as the owner of a company called Expand IT, described as an information technology consulting firm on state records.
Criminal records show that Momeni was charged in 2011 with wearing a stiletto, a felony. The case was dismissed the following year after he entered a plea.
