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, which carries a sentence of 16 years to life.
Jurors took seven days to deliver their verdict against Nima Momeni in the April 4 2023 death of Mr Lee, a well-known tech mogul who was found staggering on a deserted downtown street, dripping a trail of blood and calling for help.
Mr Lee, 43, later died in hospital.
“We think justice was done here today,” the victim’s brother, Tim Oliver Lee, told reporters. “What matters today is that we had a guilty verdict and Nima Momeni is going away for a very long time.”
Prosecutors said Momeni planned the attack on Mr Lee, driving him to an isolated spot under the Bay Bridge and stabbing him three times with a knife he took from his sister’s kitchen.
They said Momeni was angry with Mr Lee for introducing his younger sister to a drug dealer she said gave her GHB and other drugs and then sexually assaulted her.
But Momeni testified on the stand that Mr 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, claimed self-defence and said he did not realise he had fatally wounded Mr Lee or that he was even hurt.
The case has drawn national attention, partly given Mr Lee’s status in the tech world.
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,” Ms 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.
Mr Lee had created mobile payment service Cash App and was the chief product officer of the cryptocurrency MobileCoin when he died.
He had moved to Miami from the San Francisco Bay Area, where his ex-wife, Krista Lee, lives with their two children.
