Cash App Founder’s Alleged Killer Claims a ‘Bad Joke’ Led to Fatal Fight
The comment about plans to go to a strip club triggered a violent brawl, a court heard.
Illustration by Eric Faison/The Daily Beast/Getty Images
The man accused of fatally stabbing Cash App founder Bob Lee claims a “bad joke” led to a violent argument just before the tech boss died.
At his trial, Nima Momeni testified that he and Lee had been hanging out at the apartment of Momeni’s sister—Khazar Elyassnia—on the night in question.
Lee and Elyassnia are rumored to have been partying and sleeping together, though she’s married to a prominent San Francisco plastic surgeon. Prosecutors claim the relationship was the source of conflict between Momeni and Lee.
Momeni said that, after leaving her home early in the morning on April 4, 2023, the two men decided to go find a strip club. According to the Associated Press, Momeni remarked to Lee—who was quite drunk, in Momeni’s telling—that if it were him, he’d be spending his final night in town with his family, rather than going out.
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That, according to Momeni, sent Lee into a rage. “He just went from zero to 100,” he told the court. “You could see the anger.”
Momeni said Lee pulled a knife on him, obligating Momeni to defend himself. Still, he claimed he watched Lee walk away from the altercation, ostensibly uninjured. Momeni added that he disposed of the knife by throwing it over a fence, CBS News reports.
“I’m not sure why he pulled it out,” Momeni said of the weapon, according to the AP. “I was in fear for my life.” The defense has argued that Lee was on a four-day drug binge, during which he’d cumulatively spent six hours sleeping.
Prosecutors, meanwhile, claim Momeni picked up Lee from Elyassnia’s apartment and drove him to a secluded area near the Bay Bridge, where he stabbed Lee with a knife from his sister’s kitchen. Lee died in the hospital, after he was found severely wounded in downtown San Francisco, where he’d left a trail of blood in the street.
Momeni, who faces 26 years in prison if convicted, has pleaded not guilty in the case.
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