Nima Momeni, the 38-year-old Silicon Valley outsourcer accused of fatally stabbing Cash App founder Bob Lee in April, pleaded not guilty to murder Thursday.
The judge did not set bail, and Momeni will remain in custody. The court is expected to schedule a preliminary hearing Friday morning.
The suspect did not speak during the proceedings. His lawyer said outside of court that the incident had been an accident and self-defense.
Momeni, an Iranian national, was arrested on April 13, nine days after allegedly knifing the 43-year-old tech titan in a dispute over his sister, Khazar Momeni, the wife of a prominent San Francisco plastic surgeon.
The sister of Bob Lee murder suspect Nima Momeni, Khazar Momeni, right, and her husband, Dr. Dino Elyassnia, own a condo in the luxury San Francisco building where local reports say police served a search warrant in connection with the murder investigation. (Bob Lee/Instagram, Dr. Dino Elyassnia/Instagram)
Later that evening, the two were seen on surveillance video leaving an apartment building together and getting into Momeni’s car.
They drove to a parking lot, where court documents allege Lee was stabbed through the heart with a kitchen knife and seen stumbling down Main Street in San Francisco’s Rincon Hill neighborhood, where he begged passersby for help and called 911 himself.
Momeni’s arraignment had previously been postponed because his attorney, Paula Canny, had been out of town at the time of his arrest.