Bob Lee, the chief product officer at MobileCoin, who was killed Apr. 4, 2023.
Source: MobileCoin
San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin tells CNBC that an arrest has been made in the April 4 fatal stabbing of Cash App founder Bob Lee.
Earlier on Thursday, local San Francisco news outlet Mission Local reported that police went to Emeryville, California, with a warrant to arrest a suspect in the case. Both Mission Local and the San Francisco Chronicle have named Nima Momeni as the suspect. He is a tech entrepreneur in the Bay Area, according to his LinkedIn profile and reports.
The Chronicle, citing jail records, said that the 38-year-old Emeryville resident was booked on suspicion of murder at 9:19 a.m. on Thursday. CNBC has not been able to confirm the identity of the suspect.
According to media reports, the suspect knew Lee.
Peskin separately told NBC Bay Area that the San Francisco Police Department arrested an individual in Emeryville, a suburb of the city, and that “apparently” the murder was “not a random act,” but offered no further details. The police department is expected to hold a news conference with more details later Thursday.
San Francisco police officers found Lee, 43, with stab wounds at 2:35 a.m. in a deserted part of downtown San Francisco. He was taken to a hospital with life-threatening injuries and later died, police said at the time.
Lee had been working as chief product officer for the cryptocurrency company MobileCoin. He previously served as chief technology officer of Square (now known as Block), a financial technology company co-founded by former Twitter chief Jack Dorsey. Lee went on to create Cash App, a money transfer service.
He was also an investor in Elon Musk‘s SpaceX venture as well as other tech firms, such as the social audio app Clubhouse, according to his LinkedIn profile.
He was widely praised by former colleagues, including MobileCoin CEO Joshua Goldbard, who said in a Twitter thread that Lee was a “brilliant” visionary with a “kaleidoscopic” mind.
— NBC Bay Area contributed reporting to this article.
