Nima Momeni, the alleged killer of Cash App founder Bob Lee, was caught on camera reenacting stabbing motions, according to new filings from the District Attorney’s Office ahead of the upcoming trial.
The incident caught on film by a police sergeant allegedly occurred prior to Momeni’s April 13, 2023 arrest and while he was speaking to a private investigator in a public parking lot.
Momeni also, according to text messages expected to be revealed in the trial, believed Lee was involved in an “attempted rape” of Momeni’s sister, Khazar Momeni — although friends and Khazar Momeni denied the allegation.
Momeni has been in custody for a year and a half, charged with murder for the April 4, 2023, kiling of Lee. His legal team has indicated it will claim during the forthcoming trial that he stabbed Lee in self-defense during a struggle during which both men held the knife. The trial is scheduled to commence on Sept. 18.
But prosecutors note that the alleged re-enactment of the incident caught on video depicts “three distinct stabbing motions,” not a struggle over a knife. This, prosecutors claim, along with Momeni’s purported belief that Lee was involved in an alleged sexual assault of Momeni’s sister, casts the self-defense claim into doubt. Momeni’s text messages after the killing, prosecutors added, further suggest he did not act in self-defense.
Witnesses place Khazar Momeni and Lee together at the home of Jeremy Boivin earlier in the day on April 3, 2023, less than 12 hours before Lee’s killing. Lee and another friend left while Khazar Momeni and a friend named Arana Villegas proceeded to consume drugs like GHB together at Boivin’s home, according to witness interviews.
Villegas, according to prosecutors and in interviews with police, said she passed out and woke up to Khazar Momeni crying and changing clothes. She called her brother and husband to come pick her up.
This, according to prosecutors, was the seed of Nima Momeni’s animus toward Lee, who was not present: Momeni began questioning Lee “aggressively” in a video call about “the girls getting naked” at Boivin’s home, then questioned Villegas similarly. Both assured Momeni that nothing had happened, witnesses say.
But in later text messages, Momeni wrote to his sister that he had “started preparing for the rape case against both of them” — indicating to prosecutors that he believed Lee and Boivin were involved in the purported assault. He also allegedly scolded his sister over text for causing trouble. Khazar Momeni called Nima Momeni “fucking psychotic” and told him: “[y]ou scare me.”
Later in the night, Lee and Momeni spent time at Khazar Momeni’s home in Millennium Tower before leaving together in Nima Momeni’s car around 2 a.m. on April 4, 2023. The pair ended up together near the Bay Bridge in the Rincon Hill neighborhood, before a figure resembling Momeni, on surveillance footage, made a lunging motion toward a figure resembling Lee. Momeni left in his white BMW, and Lee began staggering in the street, stabbed three times.
On April 10, 2023, before details of Lee’s stabbing had been released, prosecutors allege that Momeni was caught on video in a public parking lot making “three distinct stabbing gestures and an overhand throwing gesture” while speaking with a private investigator on his case. Lee was stabbed three times, and the purported murder weapon, a knife allegedly matching knives in Khazar Momeni’s home, was discovered not far from the crime scene.
“These three stabbing motions directly correspond to the three distinct stab wounds suffered by Mr. Lee,” read a filing from prosecutors this week.
Prosecutors also pointed to Momeni’s actions after the stabbing to dispute defense attorneys’ claim that Momeni acted in self defense.
“The text messages between the defendant and Khazar Momeni go to the heart of key issues in this case,” according to the prosecution’s filing this week.
When Khazar Momeni texted her brother after the killing that “the bob thing hit hard,” for example, Nima Momeni appeared to invent a story about where Lee went after the two left Millennium Tower.
“I don’t know what [Lee] ended up doing at the bar or strip club, I just came home,” Momeni wrote, though video evidence shows Lee and Momeni together before the stabbing.
And when Khazar Momeni told her brother on April 5 that “I’m gonno [sic] get to the bottom of this and find out what happened to bob” and asking “where do [sic] you drop him off,” Nima Momeni evaded the question, prosecutors said.
He allegedly texted her to speak with an attorney about her “attempted rape case.” Khazar responded by saying that “Bob never touched [her]” — and the siblings, who typically texted multiple times a day, didn’t text for three days.
This psychopath needs to spend years in jail.
What’s next, too many Twinkies and a search for the ‘real killer’???
Stabbed 3 times? That’s not a struggle for the knife.