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The murder trial of Cash App founder Bob Lee is finally wrapping up. Accused of the crime, tech consultant Nima Momeni says he acted in self-defense.
A bad joke “just set him off,” Momeni told the jury. “I was in fear for my life.”
Momeni claims he deflected Lee’s oncoming knife, pinned his arm back into his chest twice, until he let go. Then, Lee walked away.
Video surveillance, however, appears to show Momeni stabbing Lee. Text messages and witness testimony suggest that Momeni believed Lee was responsible for his sister’s alleged sexual assault.
Now that both the prosecution and the defense have rested their case, the jury will decide if Momeni is guilty of murder. Here’s how the entire case unfolded.
April 3, 2023: The night Bob Lee died
Momeni and Lee were introduced through Momeni’s sister, Khazar, just a few days before his death. On April 3, Khazar and Lee went to the home of a man named Jeremy Boivin.
“I did not know he’s a drug dealer,” Khazar later told the jury, “as we don’t get close to our drug dealers or invite them upstairs, even. He was introduced to me [by Lee] as a friend.”
Lee soon wanted to leave with Khazar, but she refused. So, Lee left while she stayed behind and willingly took the date rape drug Boivin offered.
“He brought me a big tank of nitrous, and he had a big bottle of a liter of GHB,” Khazar said. “He gave me, like, this sweet little drink, a little shot. And I drank it.”
“I thought I could trust him,” Khazar said on the stand.
“I remember waking up twice: One time he pulled down my pants and slapped my ass. And another time he grabbed my ass, but I couldn’t move or do anything.”
In a panic, Khazar called her brother. Nima Momeni came to pick her up, and she confided in him about the assault. “I was shocked at how mature he was about it,” she said, describing him as calm and measured.
However, text messages from that night show Momeni was furious — and held Lee responsible.
Read more: MobileCoin exec Bob Lee stabbed to death in San Francisco attack
Later that evening, Lee and Momeni were together at Khazar’s home in Millennium Tower. The siblings maintain that everything was friendly. Lee got a ride in Momeni’s car around 2am and they drove to the Rincon Hill neighborhood, where surveillance footage shows a man who looks like Momeni stabbing a man resembling Lee.
Momeni left in his white BMW; Lee staggered down the street, collapsed, and died.
In the days that follow, Momeni hired criminal defense attorney Paula Canny and private investigator Brian Hedley.
On April 13, Nima Momeni was arrested.
Early days of the Bob Lee murder case
May 3, 2023: Nima Momeni pleads not guilty. However, the judge rules Momeni will remain in custody without bail.
May 4, 2023: Momeni’s missing phone becomes a point of contention. Prosecutors are keen to investigate, believing it may contain key evidence related to the case. Canny dismisses its absence as inconsequential, calling it a coincidence; that the missing phone was not a deliberate attempt to destroy evidence.
Meanwhile, Momeni’s mother, sister, and brother-in-law secure their own legal team.
May 30, 2023: The court is surprised to learn that Momeni’s lawyer Canny has been fired. Prominent attorneys Bradford Cohen and Saam Zangeneh, who have previously represented rappers Drake and Vanilla Ice, replace her.
Canny expresses disappointment but tells reporters, “Shit happens in representing people. It’s just like that, you know?”
Evidence dictates the case will go to trial — but will it be fair?
July 31, 2023: The preliminary hearing begins. The defense questions the prosecution’s suggested premeditated, “honor killing” motive.
Why was the knife never fingerprinted, the defense further questions? A police officer explains that the knife’s handle was rubber, rendering fingerprint analysis impractical.
It’s noted that a homeless man at the scene of the crime wasn’t questioned by police. The defense asks if critical evidence may have been overlooked.
August 1, 2023: A judge rules thatNima Momeni’s case will go to trial. Simply put, there’s too much evidence to dismiss the case.
November 30, 2023: Momeni’s lawyers try to argue that a trial wouldn’t be fair. They file a motion to move the trial out of San Francisco on the grounds that the city’s large population of techies view Lee as a “celebrity.”
In their eyes, an unfavorable image of him in jail, published by the San Francisco Standard, have also deemed the case unfair. However, the news outlet maintains the photograph was first cleared with Momeni’s legal team.
March 15, 2024: The request to move the trial out of the city is denied. A survey shows that while many locals were aware of the case, few had strong opinions.
Court learns Momeni reenacted stabbing, sent curious texts
September 6, 2024: New evidence is presented by the District Attorney’s Office, casting doubt on Momeni’s self-defense claim. A video filmed in a public parking lot on April 10, 2023, shows Momeni making three stabbing motions while speaking to a private investigator — which prosecutors say are the same as the stab wounds Lee suffered days prior.
They point out that Momeni doesn’t indicate a struggle in this reenactment.
The jury then hears details of Khazar’s alleged sexual assault. Text messages are shown in which Momeni tells his sister he had “started preparing for the rape case against both of them” — possibly meaning Lee and Boivin.
The prosecution also claims that Momeni’s text messages after Lee’s death are damning. He seemingly attempted to cover his tracks by writing to his sister, “I don’t know what [Lee] ended up doing at the bar or strip club, I just came home.” Of course, videos placed the pair together in Rincon Hill.
And when Khazar writes to her brother on April 5 that she will “get to the bottom of this and find out what happened to bob” and asks “where [did you] drop him off,” Momeni dodges the question.
September 18, 2024: Three major wins for the prosecution: Lee’s nickname ‘Crazy Bob,’ large chunks of evidence from his phone, and a motion to exclude the murder weapon are removed from the case. The defense was using Lee’s nickname to support the story that he was the aggressor instead of Momeni.
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The Bob Lee murder trial begins
October 14: In opening statements, both sides present their different versions of events to a packed courtroom.
October 15: A 911 call from Lee in his final moments is played, and investigators testify about the blood trail and evidence collected at the scene.
The defense again questions why the homeless man wasn’t interviewed.
October 16: Borzoyeh Mohazzabi, close friend of Lee, testifies he overheard Lee on the phone with Momeni. Lee was “interrogated” by Momeni about the perceived sexual assault on Khazar.
October 17: Khazar takes the stand. Questioned by prosecutors, she denies that her brother killed Lee and maintains Jeremy Bovin sexually assaulted her on the night of April 3.
October 22: Khazar reiterates that Lee never touched her. She says that her brother and Lee “liked each other” when asked by prosecutors if there was “any kind of bad blood” between them in the hour and a half they spent together before Lee’s death.
She describes Lee as “all over the place” and “aggressive” in the days before April 3.
Khazar also said that she had been sexually assaulted by her father.
Bob Lee’s ex-wife thrown out of court, defense asks for mistrial
October 23: Lee’s ex-wife Krista is barred from the courtroom after accusing Khazar of playing the victim on the stand. In the hallway during a break, Krista had words about Khazar’s claim that Lee’s family had intimidated her during the trial.
“Our family is the one that got murdered,” Krista says. “She can go fuck herself.”
The judge was previously asked to banish Lee’s ex-wife for referring to Khazar as “the whore of high tower,” which was refused. Today’s outburst does the trick.
Meanwhile, on the stand, Khazar admits that her memory of the events are foggy because she was under the influence of several drugs, including GHB. However, she insists that she is still able to remember pivotal moments.
October 31: San Francisco police criminalist Alain Oyafuso takes the stand to explain the DNA analysis in simple terms. Oyafuso confirms that most of the DNA on the blade of the knife matched Lee’s, while most of the DNA on the handle matched Momeni’s.
However, small doubts were cast because both the handle and the blade contained small traces of low-quality DNA from another source. This raises questions from Momeni’s lawyers.
November 4: Jurors are shown the video captured in the days following Bob Lee’s death, in which Momeni is seen reenacting the stabbing.
In the video, Momeni is seen making three stabbing motions — two toward the lower body and one higher at shoulder level — as he talks to Brian Hedley, the private investigator he hired. Momeni makes a throwing motion, which prosecutors suggest imitates how he discarded the knife.
Defense attorneys object to the video being presented, arguing that it violates attorney-client privilege and was recorded on private property. But the judge rules in favor of the prosecution.
November 5: Lead investigator Sgt. Brent Dittmer testifies that in the days following Lee’s death, Momeni’s brother-in-law searched online for ways to erase iPhones. Dittmer found this suspicious — particularly because Momeni had already given his phone to his lawyer and both Momeni and his sister had received new phones.
November 6: Momeni’s attorneys ask for a mistrial on the grounds that lead investigator Dittmer said — unprompted — that Momeni has never been out on bond. This information may taint the jury, the defense argues, because it implies he’s in jail. Jurors are typically shielded from this kind of information.
The judge denies the motion.
Nima Momeni takes the stand
November 7: Momeni’s defense team opens its arguments. DNA expert Dr. Greg Hampikian challenges the DNA evidence presented by the prosecution.
According to Hampikian, a key footnote was omitted from their report. This footnote, he testified, would have changed the interpretation of Momeni’s DNA match to the knife handle.
The defense also presented testimony from Aranza Villegas, the friend of Khazar who was with her at Jeremy Boivin’s home on April 3. She confirmed that Momeni appeared calm when he came to pick up his sister.
November 13: The defense continues its arguments by introducing forensic pathologist Dr. John Marraccini to the stand. He testifies that the stab wounds Lee sustained were consistent with Momeni’s claim of self-defense.
Marraccini believes that the shallow knife wound on Lee’s hip suggests that Lee was trying to stab Momeni. But he also acknowledged other scenarios, including the prosecution’s theory.
Later, Nima Momeni’s testimony begins. He tells the jury that Lee attacked him because he suggested that he should be at home with his family instead of “fucking around in strip clubs.” Lee’s ex-wife and two kids live near San Francisco; Lee was in town for a few days before heading home to Florida.
The comment “just set him off,” Momeni claims. “I was in fear for my life.”
“He’s yelling, cussing at me, starts going around, circling, moving around me, then gets in my face,” he said.
Momeni says he deflected Lee’s oncoming knife, pinned his arm back into his chest twice, until he let go. Then, Lee walked away.
“He was just casually walking away on his phone, just texting or whatever he was doing.” Momeni maintains he had no idea his friend was injured.
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As for Momeni’s actions after that night, he says he found out Lee had died on the morning of April 5, leading him to contact a lawyer and investigator for advice. And when asked about the reenactment video, Momeni claims he was actually reenacting Lee.
Momeni insists he was never angry with anyone on April 3 and that he “never” had any ill will towards Lee.
“I feel awful, to his family, to himself. He didn’t deserve it, I don’t think anybody deserves that. I don’t know why that had to happen.”
November 14: Momeni faces a contentious cross-examination. Prosecutor Talai attempts to poke holes in Momeni’s narrative. Momeni gets combative, evasive, and emotional on the stand.
Defense rests sans bombshell, trial comes to a close
November 19: Retired SFPD officer Steve Pomatto testifies that Momeni likely acted in self-defense. However, the prosecution questions his credibility, and highlights that Pomatto had earned nearly $10,000 for being a key witness to Momeni’s defense. While on the stand for two days, he was being paid $400 per hour.
Later in court, the defense rests its case — but fails to deliver on a promise that bombshell evidence will be revealed. Instead, his lawyers say it’ll come in closing arguments.
“We’re gonna tie it all up in closing,” Momeni’s lawyer Saam Zangeneh said. “There’s going to be some explosions in closing.”
Closing arguments are scheduled for December 2.