A self-proclaimed tech consultant was arrested Thursday in the stabbing death of Cash App founder Bob Lee last week in San Francisco, police said.
Nima Momeni, 38, was booked on suspicion of murder, San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott said during a news conference. He was taken into custody Thursday morning in Emeryville, a San Francisco suburb.
San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said Momeni will be charged with murder in Lee's death and is expected to be arraigned Friday. Prosecutors will ask a judge to hold him without bail.
Scott declined to give details on how they linked the death to Momeni or how the men knew each other. The chief also refused to disclose a possible motive for the killing.
Police found Lee with stab wounds in the Rincon Hill neighborhood of San Francisco at 2:30 a.m. April 4. He died at a hospital.
Investigators served search warrants in San Francisco and Emeryville, but Scott would not say whether a weapon has been found.
Lee is known for creating the widely used mobile payment service Cash App while working as chief technology officer of the payment company Square, now known as Block. He was the chief product officer for the cryptocurrency firm MobileCoin at the time of his death.
“I acknowledge and understand how the loss of a young, vibrant leader and innovator has rocked our city and even beyond,” Jenkins said.
On his LinkedIn profile, Momeni describes himself as an “IT Consultant/Entrepreneur” as well as the owner of a company called Expand IT.
It was not immediately clear whether Momeni has an attorney who can speak on his behalf.
“I hope today’s arrest can begin a process of healing and closure for all those touched by this tragedy,” Matt Dorsey, another San Francisco supervisor, tweeted Thursday morning.
Prominent tech leaders took to social media to mourn Lee's death and blame San Francisco for what they call the city's lax attitude toward crime. Scott and Jenkins pushed back against that narrative on Thursday, with the prosecutor specifically naming tech billionaire Elon Musk for commenting on the case.
“This doesn't have to do with San Francisco, this has to do with human nature,” Scott said.
__
Janie Har contributed to this report. Dazio reported from Los Angeles.
Apple has taken down an app that uses crowdsourcing to flag sightings of U.S. immigration agents after coming under pressure from the Trump administration.
Former Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers learned all about technology’s volatile highs and lows as a veteran of the internet’s early boom days during the late 1990s and the ensuing meltdown that followed the mania. And now he is seeing potential signs of the cycle repeating with another transformative technology in artificial intelligence. Chambers is trying take some of the lessons he learned while riding a wave that turned Cisco into the world's most valuable company in 2000 before a crash hammered its stock price and apply them as an investor in AI startups. He recently discussed AI's promise and perils during an interview with The Associated Press.
Tesla reported a surprise increase in sales in the third quarter as the electric car maker likely benefited from a rush by consumers to take advantage of a $7,500 credit before it expired on Sept. 30. The company reported Thursday that sales in the three months through September rose 7% compared to the same period a year ago. The gain follows two quarters of steep declines as people turned off by CEO Elon Musk’s foray into right-wing politics avoided buying his company’s cars and even protested at some dealerships. Sales rose to 497,099 vehicles, compared with 462,890 in the same period last year.
OpenAI could now be the world’s most valuable startup, ahead of Elon Musk’s SpaceX and TikTok parent company ByteDance, after a secondary stock sale designed to retain employees at the ChatGPT maker. Current and former OpenAI employees sold $6.6 billion in shares to a group of investors, pushing the privately held artificial intelligence company’s valuation to $500 billion, according to a source with knowledge of the deal who was not authorized to discuss it publicly. The valuation reflects high expectations for the future of AI technology and continues OpenAI’s remarkable trajectory from its start as a nonprofit research lab in 2015.
Tom’s Guide Editor-in-Chief Mark Spoonauer breaks down Apple & Amazon's latest product drops—what's hot, what's hype, and what really matters for users.
Police in Northern California pulled over a self-driving Waymo taxi after it made an illegal U-turn. But without a driver behind the wheel, they could not issue a moving violation ticket.
With satellites already in orbit, defense contractor L3Harris is standing by to accelerate Trump's executive order. We take an inside look at the technology
Electronic Arts, the video game maker of “Madden NFL,” “The Sims,” and other popular titles, is being acquired and taken private for about $52.5 billion in what could become the largest-ever buyout funded by private-equity firms.
