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The man convicted of killing Cash App founder Bob Lee in San Francisco in 2023 received his sentence Tuesday.

Nima Momeni’s lawyers were seeking a new trial this week after a recent appeal under the Racial Justice Act was denied. The defense filed a new trial motion based on other claims.

Momeni was convicted of second-degree murder in December 2024 in the stabbing death of Lee.

Members of Lee’s family addressed the court Tuesday. They included his 18-year-old daughter, Scout Lee, who spoke directly to Momeni.

“You did not just end his life; you ended an entire future built around a man,” she told Momeni, according to media reports.

Momeni, wearing an orange jail jumpsuit, maintained that he acted in self-defense. He told Lee’s family that he understood their loss.

“Unfortunately, we have completely different understandings of what transpired,” Momeni said.

Police said Lee, a renowned tech mogul, and Momeni knew each other and had gotten into an argument over Momeni’s sister.

Prosecutors said Momeni planned the attack on Lee, driving him to an isolated spot under the Bay Bridge and stabbing him three times, including once to the heart, with a knife he took from his sister’s kitchen. They said Momeni was angry with Lee for introducing his younger sister to a drug dealer she says gave her GHB and other drugs and then sexually assaulted her.

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Body camera video showed Lee walking along San Francisco’s Main Street in the early morning hours before eventually collapsing near a residential building.

Lee later died from his injuries, but not before calling 911. That phone call was presented during the trial.

Momeni testified on the stand that Lee was the one who attacked him with a knife, angry after the tech consultant chided him about spending more time with his family instead of searching for a strip club that night. Momeni, who studies martial arts, said he didn’t realize he had fatally wounded Lee or that Lee was even hurt.

Lee had created mobile payment service Cash App and was the chief product officer of the cryptocurrency MobileCoin when he died. He had recently moved to Miami from the San Francisco Bay Area, where his ex-wife, Krista Lee, lives with their two children, and had returned to California for a visit.

Jurors in the end rejected a charge of murder in the first degree, which required prosecutors to prove that Momeni acted deliberately, willfully and with premeditation. Murder in the second degree does not require premeditation.

Momeni was not sentenced until Tuesday due to the appeals.

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