By Daniel Arkin and Andrew Blankstein -
NBC News
Entrepreneur Bob Lee, founder of Cash App, was fatally stabbed by an information technology (IT) consultant near downtown San Francisco after the two men -- whom police said knew each other -- began arguing over the man's sister. suspect, according to court documents obtained Friday by NBC News.
The suspect, Nima Momeni, 38, of Emeryville, a San Francisco suburb, took Lee to an isolated area and stabbed him three times with a four-inch kitchen knife, twice in the chest, according to reports. documents.
At least one of the stab wounds pierced Lee's heart.
At one point, Momeni's sister sent a text message to Lee, the documents indicated.
"I hope you're okay, ok. Because I know Nima came at you sooooo hard," the woman wrote, the documents revealed.
"Thank you for being a gentleman in the way you handled this with class," he added.
"I love you, you selfish prick."
Entrepreneur Bob Lee, creator of Cash App.Bob Lee / Twitter
Momeni was arrested Thursday morning after a nine-day manhunt that drew national attention and increased scrutiny over public safety in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The suspect will be charged with murder, the San Francisco district attorney told reporters Thursday.
He is expected to be indicted on April 25, a spokesman for the prosecutor's office confirmed.
Momeni faces 26 years to life in prison if convicted.
The events leading up to the attack
The documents, which the San Francisco district attorney's office submitted to the court Friday as part of its attempts to hold the suspect without bail, explain the events that led to the stabbing.
Lee and a friend, who was interviewed by police, were meeting in a San Francisco hotel room on the evening of April 3, according to the documents.
The friend, identified as Witness 1, noticed that Lee was having a conversation with Momeni.
Bob Lee is best known for founding Cash App, the popular money-sending app.Getty Images
The witness heard Momeni asking Lee if his sister had been "using drugs or something inappropriate" earlier in the day.
Lee had to "assure" Momeni that "nothing inappropriate had happened," the documents said.
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Later at night, a security camera recorded Lee and Momeni getting into the suspect's white BMW outside his sister's apartment.
Additional video obtained by police shows the car heading toward a "dark and isolated area" near downtown San Francisco.
The two men are later seen standing on a sidewalk for a few minutes before Momeni stabs Lee.
Afterwards, Momeni drops the knife, gets in the car and speeds off.
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When police officers arrive on the scene around 2:30 am, according to the documents, they find Lee, unresponsive, lying in the street and bleeding "uncontrollably."
When the officers return to check the area, they find the knife smeared with blood.
"The defendant did not use a pocket knife, but a kitchen knife," the court documents said.
"This was a planned and deliberate attack."
Suspect and victim knew each other
The revelation that Lee and Momeni knew each other put an end to speculation that the Cash App creator had been the victim of a random act of violence.
In an interview that drew condemnation from the district attorney, Silicon Valley mogul Elon Musk appeared to place the blame for the murder on "repeat violent offenders."
Momeni describes himself as an entrepreneur on his LinkedIn page.
He introduces himself as the owner of a technology company called Expand IT Inc. and a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley.
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However, a UC Berkeley spokesperson told NBC News on Friday that the university has "no graduation or attendance record" for a person by the name of Nima Momeni.
Lee had been working as a product manager for the cryptocurrency company MobileCoin.
He was previously the chief technology officer of Square (now known as Block), a tech finance firm that was co-founded by Jack Dorsey, the former chairman of Twitter.
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Lee founded Cash App, a well-known money transfer service.
He was also an investor in Musk's SpaceX company, as well as other technology companies such as the Clubhouse audio app, according to his LinkedIn profile.
