A year and a half after Nima Momeni allegedly killed Cash App founder Bob Lee, Momeni’s sister, Khazar, broke her silence today and testified in court that he did no such thing.
Khazar Momeni has been at the center of the ongoing murder case: Prosecutors claim Momeni stabbed Lee, angry over some inappropriate action between Lee and his sister on April 3, 2024, in the hours before Lee’s stabbing. Momeni’s defense team, meanwhile, says his sister was actually assaulted by her drug dealer, Jeremy Boivin. They allege that Lee pulled a knife on Momeni, and Momeni was forced to turn it around on Lee.
Subpoenaed to court by prosecutors today, Khazar, testified that she had been sexually assaulted by Boivin that night — and insisted that her brother did not kill Lee. Borzoyeh Mohazzabi, Lee’s friend who was with him earlier in the day on April 3, also continued testifying today.
“When was it that you learned that your brother had killed Bob Lee?” asked prosecutor Dane Reinstedt.
“My brother was not the one who killed Bob,” said Khazar in a soft voice, dressed in a $5,500 baby-blue Valentino silk dress and carrying a Valentino clutch.
At that moment, her mother, Mahnaz Tayarani Babai, who attends every hearing and sat at the edge of her seat throughout her daughter’s testimony, waved her arms in the air, as if to make Khazar stop.
Khazar said that she has not read the news in a year, and does not discuss the case with anyone. Asked by Reinstedt if she knew Momeni was claiming self-defense but did not dispute the stabbing occurred, Khazar said, “I still don’t know what’s going on. I’m still in shock.”
Prosecutors, apparently to show this was not true, showed text messages to the jury today of Khazar arguing with her brother back in April of 2023.
In the messages, Khazar told her brother that she wanted to “get to the bottom of this and find out what happened to Bob.” She then asked Momeni in her texts where he had dropped Lee off. The two men had left her Millennium Tower condo shortly before the stabbing.
“Either I’ll ask or the cops will,” she wrote.
In another message, she said: “No, I’ll call the cops too since you called them.”
Khazar dismissed these messages as nonsensical bickering between siblings, sent while she was under the influence of drugs. Khazar said she was consuming cocaine and whippets (nitrous oxide) in the days leading up to and following Lee’s murder. She was “not in a good place,” she testified, and was upset about Lee’s death.
“This is not the real me talking … I was not doing well, my friend had passed away … this is not my real personality, I don’t usually threaten to call the cops on my brother,” Khazar said, adding that she didn’t remember sending the messages. “It is something I may have said; when I get upset I exaggerate and get dramatic.”
She said she and Momeni would often fight or block each other briefly.
Momeni, in the messages, said he would contact attorneys and bring a rape case against “both of them,” apparently referring to Lee and another person.
In the afternoon before Lee was killed, Khazar and Lee spent time together at Boivin’s home. Shortly after 5 p.m., Lee was seen leaving in an elevator with his friend, Mohazzabi. Hours later, after 8 p.m., Khazar was seen disheveled and leaving Boivin’s home with her friend.
Khazar today testified that while at Boivin’s home she took LSD and GHB, known as the date-rape drug, for the first time. Boivin, she testified, sexually assaulted her that day. Though she and Boivin appear to have spent time together outside of that afternoon, with Boivin even going to her home later that night, Khazar insisted today that she was not friends with him and referred to him almost exclusively as “the drug dealer.” Asked about any time Khazar spent with Boivin after that day, she called it an example of her returning to her “abuser.”
Momeni allegedly picked Khazar up from Boivin’s home on the evening of April 3, then called Lee to question him about what had happened. This conversation, according to prosecutors, shows Momeni’s motive for killing Lee.
Mohazzabi, who had briefly been at Boivin’s home earlier in the day, described Momeni today as “interrogating” Lee “like a crazy person.”
Earlier today, when asked if Khazar was “super-dramatic,” Mohazzabi responded, “to say the least.” He also reluctantly agreed that he told investigators back in April 2023 that Khazar may have blocked Lee’s phone in the hours before his death, though it is unclear why.
As Lee and Mohazzabi left Boivin’s home on the afternoon of April 3, 2023, Mohazzabi said that Lee had to use Mohazzabi’s phone to contact Khazar.
Reinstedt today suggested Khazar had even gone so far as to invent her sexual assault.
In response to Momeni stating that he would get a “rape case” together and speak to an attorney, text messages shown in court today showed Khazar called her brother a “dumb fuck” and wrote, “Bob never touched me. No one did.”
Khazar said she didn’t want to upset her brother about her assault or have him “make it a real thing.” Generally, she said, Momeni gave her space and both were similarly protective of each other.
“The rape case I questioned because it’s really not that simple to have a rape case against someone — girls get raped all the time,” Khazar testified today. “And they have to go to hospitals, stand there for hours … it’s a joke. It’s just not doable most of the time, so we just stay quiet.”
Khazar also revealed today that while she hasn’t spoken much with Momeni since his arrest in April 2023, she and her husband, prominent plastic surgeon Dino Elyassnia, have been helping to pay Momeni’s legal fees. Two of his five attorneys are celebrity lawyers from Florida.
Khazar’s testimony will continue on Monday.
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