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Cash App founder Bob Lee was fatally stabbed by an IT consultant near downtown San Francisco after the two men got into an argument over the suspect’s sister, according to court documents obtained by NBC News on Friday.
The suspect — 38-year-old Nima Momeni of Emeryville, a suburb of San Francisco — drove Lee to a secluded area and stabbed him three times with a 4-inch kitchen knife, including twice in the chest, according to the documents. At least one of the stab wounds punctured Lee’s heart.
In the wake of the dispute, Momeni’s sister sent a text to Lee, the documents show. “Just wanted to make sure your doing ok Cause [I] know nima came wayyyyyy down hard on you,” she wrote, according to the documents.
“Thank you for being such a classy man handling it with class,” she added. “Love you Selfish pricks.”
Momeni was arrested on Thursday morning after a nine-day manhunt that attracted national attention and intensified scrutiny on public safety issues in the Bay Area.
He will be charged with murder, San Francisco’s district attorney told reporters on Thursday. He is scheduled to be arraigned on April 25, a spokesman for the district attorney’s office confirmed. He faces 26 years to life behind bars.
The revelation that Lee and Momeni knew each other has undercut speculation that the Cash App creator was killed in a random act of violence.
Silicon Valley mogul Elon Musk, in a tweet that drew the condemnation of the district attorney, appeared to pin the blame for the killing on “repeat violent offenders.”
Momeni describes himself as an entrepreneur on his LinkedIn page. He lists himself as the owner of a tech company called Expand IT Inc. and as a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley.
However, a spokesperson for U.C. Berkeley told NBC News on Friday that the university has “no record of graduation or attendance” for a person named Nima Momeni.
Lee had been working as the chief product officer of the cryptocurrency company MobileCoin. He was previously the chief technology officer of Square (now known as Block), a financial technology firm co-founded by the former Twitter head Jack Dorsey.
He went on to create Cash App, a well-known money transfer service.
Lee also was an investor in Musk’s SpaceX venture, as well as other tech companies, such as the social audio app Clubhouse, according to his LinkedIn profile.
This is a breaking news story. Please refresh for updates.
Miguel Almaguer, Andrew Blankstein, Bianca Seward and Katie Wall contributed.
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