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When Khazar Momeni took the witness stand in her brother’s murder trial, she described spending time on a Monday morning with a drug dealer she had just met. Her friend Bob showed up and took a work call — he was a big name in San Francisco’s tech scene — and Bob invited over a DJ she once knew. The party didn’t last: Khazar didn’t get along with the DJ, blocked Bob’s number, and later in the evening, when things soured between Khazar and the drug dealer, she called her big brother to come rescue her.
These small interactions exemplify the attitudes and the many characters in the ongoing trial of Khazar Momeni’s brother, Nima Momeni, who is accused of killing Cash App founder Bob Lee in April 2023.
The Bob Lee trial is on a break this week, but closing arguments will likely begin the first week of December. Here’s a who’s who of the main characters involved.
Bob Lee was 43 when he was found bleeding to death on Main Street in the Rincon Hill neighborhood. The St. Louis transplant had a prestigious career in tech and financial tech services: He helped develop the Android mobile operating system while working at Google, then became chief technology officer at Square, where in 2013 he helped found Cash App, the digital wallet company that established him as a member of Silicon Valley’s elite. He subsequently worked as chief executive at Present, and chief product officer of MobileCoin.
Also known as “Crazy Bob,” a nickname from his fraternity at Southeast Missouri State University, Lee earned some notoriety in 2001 when he wrote a program to stop Code Red, an infamous computer virus in the early days of the internet. He met his future wife, Krista, in his hometown, and both moved to jobs in the Bay Area.
Lee’s moniker stuck. By his early 40s, he still worked and played hard. Momeni’s defense attorneys said Lee’s text records show he may have only slept about six hours in the four days before his death. In the early morning of April 1, 2023, less than two days before his death, Lee’s text messages, now evidence, reveal that at 5 a.m. after a night out, he showed up at the home of Khazar Momeni. A couple of hours later, he headed to an afterparty at the Twitter headquarters.
Around 8 a.m. on April 3, Khazar Momeni testified, Lee came to her house with his friend Jeremy Boivin in tow, before heading to a job interview. He then continued to party through 2 a.m. on April 4, and he was fatally stabbed shortly after.
Lee was beloved by those in his orbit. His friends and family remember him as kind, affectionate, and genuine, some calling him consistent, others calling him a “teddy bear.” After his mother died, Lee moved his father to the Bay Area in 2019, before moving to Miami with him in late 2022. Lee’s family said he was very close with his two children and his ex-wife, Krista, who still lives in the Bay Area.
A video from 2019 shows Lee rocking his teenage child — who is his height — in his arms to a lullaby, both giggling. The week before his death, Lee’s brother said he had attended his daughter’s play, and the afternoon before his death, Lee’s phone records indicate he was calling his ex-wife, who says they remained best friends.
Borzoyeh aka Bo Mohazzabi, or “the DJ” as Khazar Momeni and Nima Momeni’s attorneys have called him throughout the trial, was Lee’s friend. The pair can be seen in surveillance video tousling playfully in the hours before Lee’s death. His Instagram bio expands on his work life, stating he produces “music, festivals, a burning man camp, [and works] in tech.”
His role in the trial boils down to retracing the afternoon and evening Mohazzabi and Lee spent together, on April 3: Hopping from Jeremy Boivin’s home to the 1 Hotel on the Embarcadero, where Lee was staying, to the members-only club The Battery, to Mohazzabi’s home.
Most importantly, Mohazzabi was present when Lee got a call from Momeni the afternoon before his death. It is an interaction that prosecutors point to as a critical piece of evidence of Momeni’s alleged animus toward Lee. Mohazzabi described Momeni as “interrogating” Lee in an “accusatory way,” asking questions about his sister, Khazar, and her drug use “like a detective.”
As he testified, Mohazzabi’s disdain was palpable. He sneered at questions from Momeni’s defense attorney. When one of the defense attorneys asked if he works in the music industry, Mohazzabi shot back, “What do you mean, work in the music industry?” Asked to confirm he’s a DJ, Mohazzabi asked: “What do you mean by DJ?”
On the other hand, he had no issues advertising other personal quirks. He mentioned his juice cleanse repeatedly in court, and described his typical workday before he gets on his computer: “hydrate, stretch, meditate, get ready for the day and maybe do some kind of exercise.”
At one bar he visited with Lee, Mohazzabi testified that he didn’t like the tequila he ordered, so he sent it back. Watching surveillance footage in court of himself and his friend hopping around town, Mohazzabi couldn’t help but smile.
Like the other men who have testified in the trial, he has a connection to Momeni’s sister, Khazar. He described her as a “crazy,” “bipolar,” and “super-dramatic,” woman with whom he “chose not to interact” anymore, finding himself “not interested in having a friendship or a relationship.”
Khazar, who took the witness stand next, said Mohazzabi pursued her and she turned him down.
Jeremy Boivin is perhaps one of the most mysterious figures in this case. He was Lee’s friend and — according to Khazar Momeni’s testimony on the stand and his criminal record — deals drugs. Those who were at his house in SoMa on the afternoon and evening of April 3, 2023 remembered a large bowl of cocaine for guests, and recalled him carrying a water bottle of GHB, also known as the date rape drug.
Khazar Momeni said Lee introduced her to Boivin the weekend before the stabbing, and alleged on the witness stand that Boivin sexually assaulted her while she was high on GHB on the afternoon before Lee was killed. “He pulled down my pants and slapped me, and he grabbed my ass when I couldn’t move,” she testified. On later dates, she testified, Boivin choked and hit her, and threatened to kill her.
Khazar’s friend Aranza Villegas, who was present the afternoon of April 3, testified that Boivin described some of the effects of G, but didn’t specify that it was GHB, the “date rape drug,” before serving them.
Though he was on the witness list for Momeni’s defense, Boivin was never called to testify and never appeared at the trial. Instead, he became prominent in the testimony of Khazar Momeni and Villegas, as well as in questions from attorneys.
Prosecutors charging Nima Momeni with murder say he was angry with Boivin and Lee, and that a perceived interaction between the two men and his sister drove Momeni to stab Lee to death. Momeni and his defense attorneys, on the other hand, have maintained that he had no animus toward Lee, who was absent during the alleged sexual assault at Boivin’s home. While Momeni testified that he remained skeptical of his sister’s sexual assault allegations until after the stabbing, his attorneys have emphasized that if Momeni was angry with anyone that day, it was Boivin.
And though prosecutors accused Khazar of fabricating her allegations against Boivin, his rap sheet is lengthy — though jurors know nothing of his history.
In 2020, Boivin was charged with sexual assault, sexual acts with an unconscious and drugged person, as well as more drug charges like possession for sale and manufacturing controlled substances. The sexual assault charges were dropped, according to Boivin’s attorney, but he pleaded guilty to some drug charges.
In 2021 Boivin was charged with operating a drug house and possession of controlled substances for sale, and faced similar new charges in 2022. The most recent case is still pending, according to court records, and Boivin’s attorney did not confirm the outcome of the 2021 case.
On the witness stand, Nima Momeni began as soft-spoken and green, shedding tears at times and rambling over his own attorney, and even the judge. Once a prosecutor charging the case began questioning him, however, Momeni’s tone changed: The assistant district attorney was aggressive and at times condescending, and Momeni responded with defensiveness and accusations.
Momeni was born in 1984 and raised in Iran, and went to high school in the Bay Area, where he has lived ever since. His family escaped an allegedly abusive father, and he has maintained an extremely close relationship with his mother and sister, who is a year younger. He ran his own IT consulting firm, and although Momeni testified that he had five employees working for him before his arrest, others interviewed by Mission Local said the business was struggling and turnover high.
Momeni — and his family — take appearances seriously. He drove a luxury car, a white 2020 BMW Z4 with a red leather interior, and owned boats. San Francisco police Sgt. Brent Dittmer, the lead investigator on the case, testified that Momeni had two vessels, a sailboat and a ski boat, and Momeni’s mother, seated in the audience, corrected him: Under her breath, she whispered, “Three!”
Momeni’s mother said he was bullied when he was younger, and for that reason she encouraged martial arts and self-defense training. Those who knew him said in a Mission Local profile that Momeni also had a penchant for firearms, knives and cocaine.
The jury, however, does not know of Momeni’s history. Police records show Momeni was caught in 2003 with a butterfly knife, and was arrested for a DUI in 2004 with multiple knives in his possession. In 2005, an Albany police report said Momeni stabbed two people after they beat him up; he was released due to “conflicting statements,” but had multiple knives in his possession, according to the report.
The origin of the Joseph Joseph knife that killed Lee has never been established in court, but Momeni’s sister and her husband kept the same brand of knives in their kitchen, where Momeni and Lee left just before the stabbing.
During the trial, Momeni nods to his mother, who sits attentively in the courtroom at every hearing, often alone. He scribbles quietly into a composition book as witnesses testify, and betrays no emotion while he listens. Occasionally he whispers to his attorneys.
Khazar Momeni has been the star of her brother’s trial. For four days, cameramen fell over themselves trying to get a shot of her as she walked through the courthouse, head to toe in designer wear, dyed blond hair, and oversized sunglasses. Like her brother, the softness of her voice and her modest, downward gaze can be deceiving — questions from prosecutors often drew out sharp retorts, or answers that suggest the lawyers know little of her exclusive world.
She testified, for example, that it was unusual for someone like Jeremy Boivin to appear at her Millennium Tower condo in April 2023 with Bob Lee.
“We don’t get close to our drug dealers, or invite them upstairs even,” she said. “He was at my house, introduced as a friend, therefore I was nice to him.”
Throughout her testimony, she referred to the different men around her by monikers: Boivin, the man she said physically and sexually assaulted her, was “the drug dealer” to her and she added in testimony that she does not “like to mention his name.” She called Mohazzabi, whom she said she rejected when he pursued her romantically, “the DJ.”
She runs hot and cold. In her texts she affectionately called those around her love, loser, cutie, or baby — even her brother — and other times gave curt or demanding responses. “Go fucking die,” she told her brother when he asked her in February 2023 to get sober and apologize.
When she has an issue with someone, Khazar blocks their number. In text records shown in court, her brother thanks Khazar for unblocking him after a stint of no-contact in March 2023, and then gets on with the conversation. Lee, whom she blocked on the afternoon before his death, simply contacted her on WhatsApp, then Signal, and even used Mohazzabi’s phone to text her when he couldn’t get through.
Sometimes, she blames drugs for her behavior. On the afternoon before the stabbing, when Boivin allegedly gave her GHB, she testified that she did not know which country or planet she was on. When she was shown potentially incriminating text messages in court, she often blamed her drug use and bad memory to absolve herself of accountability.
Yet even when apparently sober, Khazar’s testimony could be confusing. Both sides in the case, for example, acknowledge that Momeni pushed a kitchen knife into Lee’s chest; the question that remains is whether it was self-defense or murder.
Nevertheless, Khazar’s testimony started with a fantastical statement that disregarded this agreement: “My brother was not the one who killed Bob,” she said softly, but firmly.
In her defense, Khazar testified that she knows nothing of the case, does not follow the news, and knew nothing of the self-defense argument prior to her arrival in the courtroom — though she and her husband, who keep separate apartments in the sinking and slanting luxury tower, help finance her brother’s legal team.
“My brother has not killed Bob Lee, I don’t know anything else about the case,” she testified last month, her voice trailing off as her mother, in the audience, waved her arms in the air as if to stop her from saying more.
All illustrations by Neil Ballard.
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Source: missionlocal.org