A 38-year-old tech entrepreneur has been arrested in connection with the fatal stabbing of Cash App founder Bob Lee in the streets of San Francisco earlier this month.
San Francisco police arrested the entrepreneur, Nima Momeni, Thursday morning and booked him in a county jail on suspicion of murder, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
The arrest came more than a week after Lee was stabbed around 2:30 a.m. on April 4 in the city’s Rincon Hill neighborhood. Security camera footage showed Lee staggering down San Francisco’s Main Street, appearing to attempt to flag down cars, none of which stopped to help him.
Momeni’s LinkedIn page describes him as the owner of a San Francisco IT company, Expand IT, and a past consultant and engineer for other IT companies. It is not clear how he met Lee, but police said there are reports the two argued with each other during a drive hours before Lee’s death, the Chronicle reported.
Court records show Momeni has previously been charged with multiple misdemeanors: for allegedly selling a switchblade knife, driving with a suspended license, and driving while intoxicated, the Chronicle reported.
One of Momeni’s neighbors, Chris Donatiello, described him as “a super nice guy” who “left me in a better mood every time I talked to him,” the Chronicle reported. Another neighbor, Sam Singer, described him as “warm and welcoming.”
Aside from founding the popular mobile payment service Cash App, Lee had also been the chief technology officer of its parent company, Square (now called Block), and a software engineer for Google. At the time of his death, he had for a year and a half been the chief product officer for MobileCoin, a cryptocurrency platform.
Matt Dorsey, who represents the area where Lee was killed on the city’s Board of Supervisors, tweeted Wednesday that he was “grateful” for authorities’ “tireless work.”
“Obviously, nothing can undo this senseless crime,” he added. “But I hope today’s arrest can begin a process of healing and closure for all those touched by this tragedy.”
