Nima Momeni, the man who murdered MobileCoin and Cash App founder Bob Lee three years ago, has been sentenced to 16 years to life in prison this week.
His defence is reportedly planning to file an appeal against San Francisco Superior Court Judge Alexandra Gordon’s sentencing.
The San Francisco Standard reports that Nima Momeni pushed for a new trial in a motion that argued he had ineffective counsel and both prosecutorial and juror misconduct in his case.
This was shot down, however, by Gordon in an hour-long rebuttal.
Bob Lee’s firm was a likely contributor to FTX’s insolvency
Bob Lee helped found Cash App in 2013, and launched MobileCoin in 2021. The token was an initial coin offering that went from under $2 in December 2020 to over $71 in 2021, and is now worth around seven cents.
Read more: MobileCoin: The project that doomed FTX a year before Terra Luna
Protos previously reported that MobileCoin may have contributed to crypto exchange FTX’s insolvency long before the collapse of the Terra/Luna ecosystem in May 2022.
Momeni argued he acted in self-defense
On the night of the stabbing, Lee and Momeni’s sister Khazar Momeni went to drug dealer Jeremy Boivin’s home.
Lee left Khazar who says she subsequently took the date rape drug GHB offered by Boivin.
Khazar alleges Boivin then sexually assaulted her twice before her brother came to pick her up.
Footage shows Lee visiting Khazar’s home, before Lee and Nima exited the building at 2am, at which point Nima is recorded by CCTV stabbing Lee with a kitchen knife.
Nima argued that he stabbed Lee in self defense after a bad joke “just set him off,” and claimed he deflected an attempt from Lee to stab him.
Evidence showed Lee was stabbed three times, and that only Nima’s DNA was on the knife’s handle.
The prosecution argued that the alleged sexual assault spurred Nima on to stab Lee. The prosecution also claimed that texts between Nima and his sister contradicted the events caught on camera.
The jury rejected Nima’s defence and convicted him in 2024.
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