Cash App founder Bob Lee knew the suspect in his stabbing death, police say
By Kevin Flower and Paradise Afshar, CNN
San Francisco Police have arrested Nima Momeni in connection to the murder of Cash App founder Bob Lee, San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott said during a news conference on Thursday.
Scott described Momeni as a 38-year-old man from Emeryville, California. Scott said Momeni and Lee knew one another, but he didn’t provide further details about their connection.
California Secretary of State Records indicate that Momeni has been the owner of an IT business, which, according to its website, provides services like technical support.
Momeni was taken into custody without incident, according to Scott, and taken to the San Francisco County jail where he was booked on one charge of murder.
Lee was stabbed to death in the Rincon Hill neighborhood of San Francisco early in the morning of April 4th. The moments following the stabbing attack were captured on surveillance video and in a 911 call to authorities, according to a local Bay Area news portal.
The surveillance footage, reviewed by the online news site The San Francisco Standard, shows Lee walking alone on Main Street, “gripping his side with one hand and his cellphone in the other, leaving a trail of blood behind him.”
Many in the tech world and beyond responded to news of Lee’s death with an outpouring of shock and grief. Some, including Elon Musk, also said the incident highlighted the fact that “violent crime in SF is horrific.”
But on Thursday, San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins criticized Musk’s statement as “reckless and irresponsible.” Jenkins said Musk’s remark “assumed incorrect circumstances” about the death and effectively “spreads misinformation” while police were actively working to solve the case.
Lee was the former chief technology officer of Square who helped launch Cash App. He later joined MobileCoin, a cryptocurrency and digital payments startup, in 2021 as its chief product officer.
In a statement, Lee’s family thanked San Francisco Police “for bringing his killer to justice.”
“Our next steps will be to work with the District Attorney’s office to ensure that this person is not allowed to hurt anyone else or walk free,” the family said Thursday.
“Every day around the world, people interact with technology that Bob helped create. Bob will live on through these interactions and his dreams of improving all of our lives,” the statement reads.
Josh Goldbard, the CEO MobileCoin, previously told CNN: “Bob was a dynamo, a force of nature. Bob was the genuine article. He was made for the world that is being born right now, he was a child of dreams, and whatever he imagined, no matter how crazy, he made real.”
Earlier Thursday, San Francisco Board of Supervisors member Matt Dorsey expressed his gratitude to the police department’s homicide detail for “their tireless work to bring Bob Lee’s killer to justice and for their arrest of a suspect this morning.”
— CNN’s Rebekah Riess contributed reporting.
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