Murdered Tech CEO May Have Been Stabbed to Death by Tech Exec He Knew

Remember when everyone was blaming the homeless?

Alleged Killer

Bob Lee, a cofounder of Cash App and former Square executive, as well as more recently the chief product officer of cryptocurrency company MobileCoin, was stabbed to death last week in downtown San Francisco.

Now, the San Francisco Police Department has arrested a suspect, local news publication Mission Local reports — a man Lee not only knew personally, but may have been in a car with just hours before his murder.

In other words, Lee's death may not have been the victim of a random stabbing — the tech crowd was quick to blame the homeless — but the result of a grievance between two acquaintances.

Lethal Grievance

The alleged killer, Nima Momeni, owns a Bay area computer services company called Expand IT. According to police reports, he was driving Lee through a deserted part of San Francisco in the early morning hours of April 4, just hours before the stabbing occurred.

The SFPD alleges that a fight broke out between the two men while they were driving and may have continued after Lee left the vehicle, which was registered to Momeni.

A knife was later recovered not far from the scene, which Momeni may have dropped after fleeing.

The police department's scenario — to reiterate, it's just a theory at this point — could help explain why Lee was wandering through the streets of an empty part of downtown San Francisco at 2:30 am on April 4.

Lee's death drew a huge amount of social media coverage, giving San Francisco "a feeling of a city coming undone," as Mission Local points out. But a grievance between two estranged tech execs, for obvious reasons, undermines those narratives.

More on the incident: The Cofounder of Cash App Just Got Murdered