Acquaintance arrested in connection to fatal stabbing of Cash App founder Bob Lee

A little more than a week after Cash App founder Bob Lee was murdered on a San Francisco street, police have arrested a suspect — and he's not who most people had expected.

On Thursday morning, police arrested 38-year-old Nima Momeni, an IT consultant and entrepreneur who owned Expand IT, Inc., a cyber-security and web-hosting firm that he founded in 2010. Momeni was arrested outside the Besler Building, the swanky condominium complex in Emeryville where he lived and worked.

Neighbors are shocked by the turn of events. "That's absurd," said one. "That's been circulating everywhere. No idea it'd be someone like literally we've had a lot of interaction with, on and off, in this complex."

Sam Singer, who opened an office next door to Momeni just a few weeks ago, described the suspect as "a nice fellow" and said he hoped that the police had made a mistake and that "it's not true."

Residents at the Besler Building are not the only ones surprised by Momeni's arrest. Lee was attacked violently in the middle of the night, so many believed that he had been the victim of random street violence. However, police now say that Momeni and Lee knew each other and that they may have argued while driving around in Lee's car just hours before Lee died.

Lee died in the early morning hours of April 4 after he sustained two stab wounds to the left side of his chest. Surveillance footage later showed Lee collapsing to the floor outside a building and then struggling to call for help. The 43-year-old tech titan, who had moved to Miami several years ago but who had returned to the Bay Area for a tech summit, was pronounced dead at the scene.

Krista Lee, Lee's ex-wife, expressed relief that a suspect had been identified and arrested. "This is the first step toward justice," she said.

Momeni has been accused of some criminal activity in the past, but nothing remotely comparable to murder. On separate occasions, he was arrested for a DUI and for illegally selling a switchblade, but both arrests occurred more than a decade ago. Conflicting reports say that he either paid a small fine and served a few days in jail or that both cases were dismissed. KTVU also reported that Momeni has had liens on several of his California properties.

Lee is best known for his work with Google, where he helped develop Android's core library, and with Square, now known as Block, where he helped found Cash App. Lee was working as the chief product officer at MobileCoin at the time of his death. In addition to his ex-wife, Lee is survived by at least two daughters.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!