SAN FRANCISCO — The tech guide convicted in the stabbing death of Money App founder Bob Lee was sentenced in San Francisco on Tuesday to 16 years to life to jail.
A jury in December 2024 discovered Nima Momeni responsible of second-degree homicide, rejecting the defendant’s declare that he had acted in self-defense. He has remained in custody since his arrest 9 days after the April 4, 2023, killing.
Earlier than imposing the sentence, San Francisco Superior Court docket Choose Alexandra Gordon rejected Momeni’s request for a brand new trial. His attorneys have stated they plan to enchantment.
Members of Lee’s household addressed the courtroom on Tuesday, together with his 18-year-old daughter, Scout Lee, who spoke on to Momeni.
“You didn’t simply finish his life, you ended a whole future constructed round a person,” she advised Momeni, in keeping with media stories.
Momeni, sporting an orange jail jumpsuit, maintained that he acted in self-defense. He advised Lee’s household that he understood their loss.
“Sadly, now we have fully completely different understandings of what transpired,” Momeni stated.
Lee, a famend tech mogul, was discovered staggering on a abandoned downtown road, dripping a path of blood and calling for assist. Lee, 43, later died at a hospital.
Prosecutors stated Momeni planned the attack on Lee, driving him to an remoted spot below the Bay Bridge and stabbing him thrice, together with as soon as to the center, with a knife he took from his sister’s kitchen. They stated Momeni was indignant with Lee for introducing his younger sister to a drug seller she says gave her GHB and different medicine after which sexually assaulted her.
However Momeni testified on the stand that Lee was the one who attacked him with a knife, angry after the tech guide chided him about spending extra time together with his household as a substitute of looking for a strip membership that evening. Momeni, who research martial arts, stated he did not notice he had fatally wounded Lee or that Lee was even damage.
Lee had created cell fee service Money App and was the chief product officer of the cryptocurrency MobileCoin when he died. He had lately moved to Miami from the San Francisco Bay Space, the place his ex-wife Krista Lee lives with their two youngsters, and had returned to California for a go to.
Jurors in the long run rejected a cost of homicide within the first diploma, which required prosecutors show that Momeni acted intentionally, willfully and with premeditation. Homicide within the second diploma doesn’t require premeditation.
