The killing of the Cash App founder Bob Lee in San Francisco last week was a “planned and deliberate attack”, prosecutors in the case said in a court document on Friday.
Officials allege Nima Momeni, a 38-year-old tech consultant, brought Lee to a secluded spot and stabbed him three times with a kitchen knife over an argument related to Momeni’s sister.
Lee died in a hospital last week after police found him overnight on 4 April with stab wounds on a sidewalk in the city’s Rincon Hill neighborhood. On Thursday, San Francisco police announced that they had arrested Momeni, who they said knew Lee.
Momeni made his first court appearance on Friday, but did not enter a plea. Wearing an orange sweatshirt and pants, he did not speak except to say: “Yes your honor,” when the judge asked if he agreed to decline his right to a speedy trial.
Momeni is being detained without bail and faces 26 years to life in prison if convicted, according to the district attorney’s office.
Several of Momeni’s relatives filled the courtroom on Friday, including his younger sister Khazar Elyassnia, who officials say was at the center of a dispute between the suspect and Lee, and her husband, Dino Elyassnia, a prominent San Francisco plastic surgeon.
An attorney representing Momeni told reporters after the hearing: “The facts of what occurred, or didn’t occur, will come out over time.”
The motion to detain Momeni, the court document released on Friday, provided the first official account of the circumstances surrounding Lee’s death and relies on surveillance video and testimony of a longtime friend who spent time with Lee shortly before he died. Khazar Elyassnia is not mentioned in the document by name, but prosecutors make mention of her residence.
The evening before the attack, Lee, the friend, and Khazar Elyassnia – who had met each other through Lee years earlier – were drinking together at another person’s apartment, according to the document.
The friend said they went to Lee’s hotel room, without Khazar Elyassnia, where the friend noticed a conversation in which Momeni was questioning Lee over whether his younger sister “was doing drugs or anything inappropriate”, according to the document. Lee reassured Momeni that nothing inappropriate had happened. It is unclear whether the conversation took place in person or by phone.
The friend and Lee parted ways around 12.30am. Shortly after, Lee went to the Millennium Tower, according to video surveillance, where Khazar Elyassnia lives. The video also shows Lee and Momeni leaving the building just after 2am and driving off in Momeni’s white BMW.
Prosecutors say that Momeni drove to a dark and secluded spot, where they got out of the car and he suddenly attacked Lee with a kitchen knife. He then sped away “and left victim to slowly die”, according to the motion. Police recovered a knife with a 4-inch blade at the scene.
Khazar Elyassnia sent Lee a text message to check in on him because her brother came “down hard on you” and to thank him for “handling it with class”, according to the motion.
An autopsy found that Lee was stabbed three times, once in the hip and twice in the chest, which led to his death.
A lawyer for Momeni did not immediately return a request for comment.
The stabbing death of Lee shocked the tech industry, with friends and former colleagues mourning a man they described as brilliant, gregarious and a doting father to his two children. Lee had recently moved to Miami with his father and was back in San Francisco for business when police found him last week.
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 business in state filings.
Criminal records show Momeni was charged in 2011 for carrying a switchblade, a misdemeanor offense. The case was dismissed the following year after he took a plea.
