Bob Lee's Killer Still Claims Self-defense As Judge Hands Him 16 Years To Life
A San Francisco jury found Nima Momeni guilty of second-degree murder for stabbing Cash App founder Bob Lee to death in 2023. On Tuesday, a judge sentenced him to 16 years to life — and in court, he still wouldn't fully own what he did.
Case at a glance
- Nima Momeni — defendant, convicted of killing Bob Lee, convicted
- Bob Lee — Cash App founder, former Square and MobileCoin executive, victim
- Alexandra Gordon — San Francisco Superior Court Judge, official
- Oliver Lee — Bob Lee's brother
- Mahnaz Tayarani — Nima Momeni's mother
- Khazar Momeni — Nima Momeni's sister
Next: Momeni's attorneys have said they plan to appeal both the conviction and the 16-years-to-life sentence, though none of the coverage lays out a filing date or timeline for that appeal. For now, Momeni remains in state custody, credited for the nearly four years he has already served since his arrest in April 2023.
What happened before dawn on Main Street
In the early hours of April 4, 2023, Bob Lee and Nima Momeni left Khazar Momeni's apartment at the Millennium Tower together, riding in Momeni's BMW. They ended up on a dark block of Main Street between Folsom and Harrison, in San Francisco's Rincon Hill neighborhood, near the foot of the Bay Bridge.
Blurry surveillance footage showed Momeni lunge at Lee outside the car. Lee stumbled away down the block while a figure presumed to be Momeni was seen hurling an object over a nearby fence. Prosecutors said that object was a kitchen knife taken from Khazar Momeni's apartment, and that Momeni used it to stab Lee three times — twice in the chest and once in the hip. An autopsy later found Lee had been stabbed in the heart and the lung, CNN reported.
Lee managed to call 911 himself. He was found staggering on the street, bleeding, calling for help. He died at a hospital. He was 43.
Momeni drove off. He was arrested nine days later and was arraigned on a charge of first-degree murder on May 2, 2023.
Who Bob Lee and Nima Momeni are
Bob Lee created Cash App and had served as chief technology officer at Square before becoming chief product officer at the cryptocurrency firm MobileCoin. He had recently moved to Miami from the Bay Area, where his ex-wife, Krista Lee, still lived with their two children; he was back in San Francisco visiting that week.
Nima Momeni, now 42, was an Emeryville-based IT consultant who studies martial arts. His sister, Khazar Momeni — identified by the Guardian as Khazar Elyassnia — lived at the Millennium Tower and knew Lee socially.
Prosecutors said Khazar had told her brother that a drug dealer, someone Lee had introduced her to, gave her GHB and other drugs and then sexually assaulted her. Prosecutors argued Momeni blamed Lee for making that introduction and drove him to the isolated street under the Bay Bridge to confront him over it.
"Unfortunately, we have completely different understandings of what transpired." — Nima Momeni, addressing Bob Lee's family at sentencing
What the court record shows
Momeni was originally charged with first-degree murder, a charge that would have required prosecutors to prove he acted deliberately, willfully and with premeditation. At trial — a case that stretched roughly two months, with his brother counting 19 trial days — Momeni testified that Lee attacked him first with a knife, angry after Momeni chided him about chasing down a strip club instead of spending time with his family that night. Momeni said he acted in self-defense and didn't realize he had fatally wounded Lee.
After about a week of deliberation, the jury rejected the first-degree murder charge and rejected the self-defense claim, convicting Momeni on Dec. 17, 2024, of second-degree murder — meaning jurors found the killing willful but not premeditated. Under California law, that conviction carries a sentence of 16 years to life.
Sentencing was delayed nearly two years while Momeni's legal team pursued a new trial. They argued ineffective assistance of counsel, mischaracterizations by attorneys, and — under California's Racial Justice Act — that prosecutors showed bias by referring to Momeni as an "animal" and raising his Middle Eastern background during the original trial. They also claimed Judge Alexandra Gordon made inappropriate facial expressions in front of the jury. Gordon denied the racial-bias claim in September 2026, finding no evidence of bias.
On Tuesday, after nearly two hours of argument, Gordon rejected the remainder of the new-trial motion and imposed the 16-years-to-life sentence, crediting Momeni for the nearly four years he has already spent in custody and adding restitution and fees. His attorneys have said they plan to appeal.
What was said in court
Lee's daughter, Scout Lee, now 18, was 14 when her father was killed. "I vividly remember the day my father was killed," she told the court, describing waking from a nap to find her mother sitting on the edge of her bed with the news. She spoke directly to Momeni: "You did not just end his life, you ended an entire future built around a man," according to media reports cited by CNN. The Guardian quoted her telling Momeni, "Mr Momeni, you didn't just take my dad that day. You took my best friend," and saying her world was "shattered."
Lee's brother, Oliver Lee, said Momeni "will always be the man who tried to take Bob's light out of this world. His light is still here." He told KTVU, "I don't think he's taken accountability for this at all. He's still trying to escape the consequences or escape liability." According to Mission Local, he also said he'd spent the trial "watching him take the stand and lie and tear down my brother while Bob wasn't there to answer. Bob has had no voice. That ends today."
Momeni's mother, Mahnaz Tayarani, asked the judge to weigh her son's whole life against this one night. "A person's life can hold more than the worst moment of his life. Nima is not perfect. No human being is," she said, per the Guardian, and told the court she was praying for both families.
Momeni, in an orange jail jumpsuit, maintained his account of what happened without fully accepting blame. He told Lee's family, "Unfortunately, we have completely different understandings of what transpired." He added, per KTVU, "I know you have suffered, and for any part I had in that, I am sorry," and told the court, per Mission Local, "I honestly just want both our families and friends to know that I'm truly sorry and regretful... I feel for all the unnecessary pain and sorrow and unwanted publicity both of you endured during this process."
A killing that first became a referendum on San Francisco
Before Momeni's arrest, Lee's death was treated as proof of random street violence in San Francisco. Prominent tech figures, including Elon Musk, blamed city leaders for lawlessness, the Guardian reported, reigniting a long-running debate over safety on the city's streets.
That narrative fell apart once investigators determined Lee and Momeni knew each other and that the stabbing grew out of a personal dispute involving Momeni's sister — not a stranger's attack.
What happens next
Momeni's attorneys have said they plan to appeal both the conviction and the 16-years-to-life sentence, though none of the coverage lays out a filing date or timeline for that appeal. For now, Momeni remains in state custody, credited for the nearly four years he has already served since his arrest in April 2023.
How this plays in court
Prosecutors built their case around premeditation evidence: Momeni drove Lee to an isolated spot under the Bay Bridge, armed himself with a knife pulled from his own sister's kitchen, and — in their telling — confronted Lee over the sexual assault allegation involving his sister. That's a theory built for first-degree murder. The jury didn't buy all of it; convicting on second-degree murder instead means jurors found Momeni acted willfully, but weren't convinced the killing was planned out in advance.
The defense had one card to play, and it was Momeni's own testimony: that Lee attacked first with a knife during an argument over a strip club, and that Momeni, who trains in martial arts, acted to defend himself without realizing how badly he'd hurt Lee. The blurry surveillance footage cut both ways — it showed a lunge and a man fleeing, but not clearly who started it. A jury that rejects self-defense while also rejecting premeditation is a jury that believed somebody escalated that night, but wasn't sure who threw the first blow.
The new-trial fight tested a different set of facts entirely — not what happened on the street, but what happened inside the courtroom. Claims of ineffective counsel and a judge's facial expressions are notoriously hard to win on appeal; they require showing the trial was fundamentally unfair, not just imperfect. The Racial Justice Act claim was more serious on paper, alleging prosecutors used language ('animal') and raised Momeni's ethnicity in ways the law now prohibits — but Judge Gordon found no evidentiary support for bias, which is the finding an appellate court will have to specifically overturn.
What an appeals court will weigh going forward isn't guilt — that's settled — but whether any legal error during trial or during the new-trial hearing was serious enough to undo a conviction a jury already reached after a week of deliberation. That's a much narrower question than the one 12 jurors spent two months answering.
- San Francisco Chronicle: Bob Lee's Killer Still Claims Self-defense As Judge Hands Him 16 Years To Life
- Mission Local: Bob Lee’s killer, Nima Momeni, gets 16 years to life for Cash App founder’s stabbing
- KTVU: CashApp founder killing: Nima Momeni sentenced nearly two years after conviction
- The Guardian: Nima Momeni sentenced to 16 years to life in murder of Cash App founder Bob Lee
- CNN: Tech consultant sentenced to 16 years to life in stabbing death of Cash App founder Bob Lee