A San Francisco jury on Tuesday convicted IT consultant Nima Momeni in the fatal knife attack on tech executive Bob Lee in 2023, a killing that raised concerns about rampant street crime in the city – but was actually motivated by a personal dispute was.

The jury acquitted Momeni of first-degree murder but found him guilty of second-degree murder.

A verdict was reached on Monday, but was announced on Tuesday after deliberations began on December 4th. The jury has been asked to consider first-degree murder involving the use of a deadly weapon, NBC Bay Area reported.

Momeni appeared emotionless as the verdict was read, as did his lead lawyer, who attended the hearing via Zoom, the station reported.

He faces 16 years to life in prison, San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said.

Lee, the 43-year-old founder of the popular money transfer service Cash App, was found stabbed to death near downtown San Francisco in the early morning of April 4, 2023. He was taken to a hospital but died from his injuries.

A dispatcher told police that a man was “yelling ‘Help’ and saying, ‘Someone stabbed me,'” records showed.

The case immediately sparked controversy when SpaceX’s Elon Musk posted on social media about crime in San Francisco after Lee’s death and questioned the district attorney about “repeat violent offenders.”

Instead, a week later, San Francisco police announced the arrest of 40-year-old Momeni, who is not a repeat offender and whose sister was friends with Lee.

Momeni was accused of driving Lee to a remote area and then stabbing him three times with a 4-inch kitchen knife. Lee was stabbed in the heart.

Prosecutors said Momeni planned to kill Lee and that he had argued with Lee about his sister.

Momeni testified that his sister called him on April 3 and asked him to pick her up from the apartment of a friend of Lee’s, whom the sister described as her drug dealer. The sister testified that she told her brother that she may have been sexually abused after taking the drug GHB.

Prosecutors alleged in court documents that on the night of the murder, a witness saw Momeni questioning Lee “about whether his sister was using drugs or doing something inappropriate,” and Lee had to reassure him that nothing had happened.

Momeni claimed he acted in self-defense after Lee pointed a knife at him.

Momeni told jurors that Lee had been using drugs the night the stabbing occurred. They were in a car together but stopped because Momeni thought Lee was going to throw up, and Momeni said Lee attacked him after Momeni joked that he would rather spend his last night with family in San Francisco than in would spend at strip clubs.

Momeni claimed that Lee had to defend himself when he pulled out the knife. Momeni said there was an argument over the gun and eventually Lee walked down the street, but Momeni did not know Lee had been stabbed.

The trial began on October 14th. Deputy District Attorney Omid Talai said in his opening statement that Lee, who was then chief product officer of cryptocurrency company MobileCoin, was “stabbed in the heart and left for dead.”

Asked why the jury chose second-degree murder rather than first-degree murder, Jenkins, the prosecutor, said: “Of course we presented evidence that we thought supported a conviction of first-degree murder, but at the end of the day “The jury has come out with their verdict and we respect what that is and we understand, based on the facts, how they could get there.”