Murderer of Cash App founder seeks new trial citing racial bias

Nima Momeni, a non-U.S. citizen born in Iran, returns to a San Francisco courtroom to challenge his murder conviction for the stabbing death of Bob Lee, the Cash App founder. Convicted in December 2024, Momeni’s new defense team will rely on the state’s Racial Justice Act, alleging that prosecutors employed dehumanizing, ethnically charged descriptions of him at trial. The judge will hear these claims at an evidentiary hearing on Friday morning.

Lee, a former Google engineer and MobileCoin executive, was killed beneath the Bay Bridge in April 2023 after a night involving drug use and a woman named Khazar Elyassnia. Although Momeni has not yet been sentenced, he remains in San Francisco County jail and faces a potential term of 16 years to life. The hearing follows a 2025 precedent where a San Francisco judge granted a similar RJA motion for a Black defendant, reducing his conviction to a misdemeanor.