A San Francisco tech executive has been arrested as a suspect in the murder of Cash App founder Bob Lee earlier this month.
San Francisco police apprehended information technology consultant and entrepreneur Nima Momeni, 38, in Emeryville, California, early Thursday, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin confirmed the suspect was taken into custody at 9:19 a.m. local time. Momeni’s relationship to Lee is still unclear.
Lee was killed in the early hours of April 4 near the San Francisco area that houses Google’s office and Oracle Park, home of the San Francisco Giants.
Lee helped found the payment platform Cash App in 2013 as the chief technology officer at its parent company, Block (formerly Square). He was later involved in the tech startups Clubhouse and SpaceX, and at the time of his death was the chief product officer at the cryptocurrency company MobileCoin.
Lee’s death prompted criticism of the city’s handling of crime. But San Francisco Mayor London Breed (D) urged the public on Monday not to jump to conclusions about what happened.
“When the facts of many of these cases come out, many people are going to be surprised,” she said at the time, according to ABC 7, adding the case was still “under investigation.”
Lee’s killing came amid intense debate among San Francisco residents about crime. Last year, progressive prosecutor Chesa Boudin was successfully recalled as district attorney following a Republican-led campaign that tried to capitalize on residents’ frustration with violent crime and homelessness.
Last Thursday, San Francisco Police Commissioner Kevin Benedicto accused people of “exploiting this horrific incident for political gain,” telling The New York Times that “a small minority has tried to weaponize this tragedy to advance a narrative about a crime wave that just isn’t borne out by the data in San Francisco.”
There were the same number of homicides ― 56 ― in the city in 2022, 2021 and 2017, according to data from the San Francisco Police Department. Like much of the nation, San Francisco saw some violent crime diminish during the pandemic.
This is a developing story.
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