Suspect In Murder of Tech Exec in San Francisco Also Worked in Tech

The San Francisco Police Department has made an arrest in the highly publicized murder of tech executive Bob Lee, founder of Cash App. The murder, which was committed on April 4, was met with calls from the Silicon Valley community to end what they describe as an era of lawlessness, homelessness, public drug abuse, and crime in San Francisco, but the suspect SFPD arrested today—a person who knew Lee personally and also worked in the tech industry—does not fit that narrative at all.

Mission Local reported that sources said the suspect was Nima Momeni, the owner of a company called ExpandIT. Lee and Momeni may have been traveling by car together on the night Lee was killed, according to Mission Local. ExpandIT did not respond to Motherboard’s request for comment.

On Thursday afternoon, SFPD confirmed in a press conference that Momeni had been arrested and charged with Lee’s murder.

In the morning hours following the news of Lee’s death, people in tech called the city a “literal hell hole.” 

According to the police report of the murder, officers responded at about 2:35 a.m. to the 300 block of Main Street, where they found “a 43-year-old adult male victim suffering from apparent stab wounds.” He was transported to a hospital “with life-threatening injuries,” the police said, but succumbed to his injuries. An investor in multiple Silicon Valley companies including SpaceX, Clubhouse, Figma, and Tile,  Lee was working as the CPO of cryptocurrency company MobileCoin when he died. The San Francisco Police Department did not name Lee in its report, but MobileCoin CEO Josh Goldbard confirmed his death in a statement from the company. 

The news of Lee’s death shocked his peers in the tech world, including Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, who wrote on his new social network nostr: “It’s real. Getting calls. Heartbreaking. Bob was instrumental to Square and Cash App. STL guy.”

Many others alluded to, or directly blamed, San Francisco's crime rates for Lee’s death. 

“San Francisco is in a crises[sic] with crime at all time high and a never ending homeless epidemic,” mobile wallet startup founder Parul Gujral tweeted. “Very sad to see.” (Violent crime is actually relatively low in San Francisco, year over year.)

“This is awful news. San Francisco is a literal hell hole,” wrote crypto influencer Tara Bull.

“I'm angry and sad. We cannot tolerate violent crime in the city and must remove the elected officials who got us here with their pro-crime and anti-police policies,” tweeted Steven Buss, co-founder of an NGO called GrowSF. 

“San Francisco is now a clear and present danger to our nation's tech center,” conservative commentator @amuse tweeted. “Cash App founder, Bob Lee aka @crazybob, was stabbed to death on the street. It is time to mobilize the national guard until local authorities can regain control of the streets.” 

Discourse about crime in San Francisco continued in the week after Lee’s death; on April 9, tech founder, San Francisco resident and former McKinsey business analyst Michelle Tandler tweeted about being woken up by her dog in the middle of the night, in a thread about the tension she feels living in the city. She wrote that public executions historically “worked” to deter crime: “100 years ago in SF people were publicly hung for their crimes. Often by vigilante groups that wanted to send a message. The hangings worked. Crime would plummet after a few of them. Often for many months at a time.” 

San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins addressed the online speculation around Lee’s death during Thursday’s press conference, saying that “reckless and irresponsible statements… serve to mislead the world in their perceptions of San Francisco, and also negatively impact the pursuit of justice for victims of crime, as it spreads misinformation at a time when police are trying to solve a very difficult case.”

The tech community has been blamed for worsening the widening wealth gap and problems like homelessness in the city. San Francisco has the second-most expensive rent in the country, thanks in large part to the companies that started or moved to the valley and brought gentrification, higher cost of living, and increased evictions to the city’s residents. The relationship between longtime locals and tech workers has often been tenuous and sometimes resentful, but in recent years, those workers have also turned their aggravation at the city’s systemic failures toward its most affected and marginalized. 

Meanwhile, San Francisco’s crime rates are comparable to other major cities, and in some cases, like homicides, is actually well below other places like Minneapolis, Portland, and Seattle. While politicians in the city promised in 2020 to “defund” police and direct funds to Black communities, that promise wasn’t kept, and the police budget was increased again in the next fiscal year to $689 million.

“If the police do have their man, this was not a robbery gone bad nor a motiveless assault by some random attacker—but an alleged grievance between men who knew one another, that the suspect purportedly escalated into a lethal conflict,” Joe Eskenazi wrote for Mission Local.

Momeni is expected to be arraigned on Friday at 1:30 p.m. PST.

This story has been updated with comments from SFPD and the San Francisco District Attorney.