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News Tuesday bo San Francisco.
Let's see.
It's April fourth, three.
Where are you?
The nine one one call comes in at two thirty four in the morning from near downtown San Francisco.
Hello, where are you?
The caller sounds stunned. He doesn't say his name, He just keeps repeating health, health, until he says, I know you hear me?
Where are you?
Have somebody stabbed?
Where are you?
After a minute or so, the caller starts gasping for brud, I have help going to there.
Where are you?
The nine one one operator tries to get more information out of him without much luck.
Are you outside or inside?
Listen to my questions?
I know you can hear me.
Well, okay, you're on the street outside.
I'm what I'm at?
He need to hospital?
Oh?
Slowly he starts struggling for energy three until three minutes in he goes quiet.
Zero two thirty sir. And fifty three seconds.
The police arrive. Officer Drew Jackson is the first on the scene.
Hey, hey, it's a police man.
Zero two.
It's the police.
Yeah, the police is there for you.
Can you see that.
This recording is from his body camera here.
In front of a four oh three main.
Hey, it's the police.
Hey, who did this to you?
The video, I should say, is awful. You can and see Officer Jackson come upon this body collapsed on the sidewalk. It's a man. He looks completely helpless. He's gone pale and is struggling to breathe.
Hey, my friend.
Officer Jackson pulls up the victim's shirt to reveal stab wounds and blood on his chest. He starts cutting off the victim's clothes.
I know, but he's not.
Doing too that.
A few hours later, the man would be pronounced dead of multiple stab wounds to the chest and heart. The police don't know it yet, but the victim is Bob Lee, a successful tech executive and programmer who had a hand in creating many popular tech products. He worked at Google on the Android phone. He was CTO of Square, the payment company, and he found a cash app, an incredibly popular pool for sending or receiving money via smartphone. He was respected and well liked in the tech industry. His
death would send shockwaves through the community. What happened following this moment was unlike anything I've ever seen in San Francisco. It took nine days for the police to rest a suspect. In those nine days, very little was even said about the investigation, and so rumors, fear, and misinformation rushed in to fill the void. Online speculation turned Bobly's death into something else, into a narrative, a story about San Francisco
and its decline. At first, there were some prominent figures in tech who thought that Bob's murder was the manifestation of all that was wrong with the city, a famously progressive place that had crumbled into lawlessness bush by its own liberal policies. To them, Bob Lee's death became a symbol of what came to be known as the San Francisco doom loop. Leaders in the tech industry started calling for change. They placed the blame for Bob's death at
the feet of the city's politicians. San Francisco was among the first major cities where there were calls for a return to law and order while flaunting the actual crime statistics, but it would not be the last.
The Trump administration is also increasing the pressure on Minnesota.
Thousands of immigration nations were sent to the Twin cities.
Trump administration is deploying an additional two thousand National Guard troops to Los Angeles.
Amid his effort to deploy the National Guard to cities like Portland and Chicago.
In the years since Bob Lee's death, President Trump would deploy federal troops to several cities with Democratic leaders.
I don't like being up.
You're talking about how unsafe and how dirty and disgusting this once beautiful capital was.
He would argue that crime was quote out of control, and that these cities were burning down, that the streets were in crisis, and for anyone living in San Francisco, this kind of language might sound pretty familiar. The San Francisco Doom Loop was only the first chapter of how Bobley's death was spun. After that, when details of Bobley's personal life started being reported out in the press, a
new story started to emerge. Bob was held up as an example of the tech industry's excessive party scene, replete with sex, drugs, and house music. What was the real story, Why was Bob Lee killed? And who really was to blame the city, the industry, or something else entirely. I'm sean wen, this is foundering. The killing of Bob Lee.
I'm trying. I should look up with our last text message hold on me.
I first met Bobley's former wife, Chrystal Lee, at her family home in Marin County. She moved there after she and Bob separated, while he stayed in the penthouse apartment in San Francisco. She still lives there with their kids and her partner.
Okay, so this was in April third and eight, eight or six pm. How are you feeling hanging with Bow in the city And I messaged back, Hey, sexy boys, I'm in bed, not suitable for public eye. I feel like crap, Like just leave me alone and say, oh I feel better, babe. We'll hit you up tomorrow. And that was the last message that I heard from him.
Krista and Bob met when they were both twenty two years old. They became adults together and raised kids. They divorced in twenty eighteen after a sixteen year relationship, but they stayed close, not just we have kids close, but we still party together close. They had a shared family group text and were in constant touch.
He'll send a message on our family thread, you know, love you guys, see you soon. He was always in communication with our family.
It was the morning of April fourth. Bob had moved to Miami a few months before all of this, but he was back in town for a work trip and to see his daughter's school play. Krista had seen him the night before, but hadn't heard from him all morning. She was in the car with her daughter.
I was driving and I said, do me a favorite check Dad's location for me. Something's not right.
Bob's phone showed that he was at the police station. After Krista dropped her daughter off at school, she texted him.
April fourth, nine, forty nine, am Are.
You in jail?
Question mark?
Question?
Question mark? I got multiple calls at six am from Zuckerberg General Hospital, no message, and when I called back, they said it was probably just auto update confirmation for an appointment, but I don't have appointments there. Then I had Scout double check your location. It shows you at the police station.
She didn't hear back. A few hours passed.
We were out back having lunch and I tried to call him again. It was going right to voicemail. I'm like, this isn't right. I've got a weird feeling. Shortly after that, that's when our friend Ali called me and said, babes, have you talked to Bob this morning?
Ali is a close friend of Bob's.
He goes, I don't want to alarm you, but it shows his location at the police station. And of course then I kind of giggled to myself, like, how many people have your location? Honey? Ali was like, you know, I'm in the area. I'm going to go see what's going on, Like, did he get beat up? Did something happen the I guess A receptionist and at the at the police station said, you know, the person matching this
description was taken to the hospital. My heart dropped, and I mean we left the house within two seconds of that and went down there and Ali said I'm on my way there right now. And of course the entire drive, we're thinking, Okay, what happened? What damn it, Bob? What did you do? Or even worse, you know, did he get attacked by someone? You know, what's going on here? Nothing made sense.
Christal arrived at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital with her partner Jeremy.
I walked up, I gave them my ID and the one said, oh, okay, let's take you back to this private waiting room. I'm thinking, what the fuck is going on here? And then maybe about five minutes past and it's just kind of a we're kind of making little jokes here and there, like what is going on with Bob. Shortly after that, a nurse and the attending doctor came into the waiting room and said, you're the wife of
Bob Lee, a former wife, Crystal Lee. And he's like, I'm so sorry to inform you, but we did everything we could, but we couldn't say Bob. I almost passed out. This flush went over me and it was like, you know, I couldn't even hear what he was saying anymore. It was just all of a sudden, you know, ears are death, and I'm listening to this person try to tell me, you know, and they don't even say his name. They keep saying a man matching his description, and I.
Was like, what the what the fuck? What is going on here?
And I'm looking at Jeremy and I couldn't even make a tear. I couldn't catch my breath, and they wanted me to stick around. They wanted me to talk to the medical examiner all this other stuff, and it's like the only thing I could think of was I have to go home. My kids just got out of school. They're at the house. I have to go home now. I have to tell my children that their father was stabbed to death.
Krista made the hour long drive back to her house. She pulled in the driveway.
I just kind of sat in the car, looking out the window and hoping that I was going to get a call saying, oops, wrong guy, never mind it was some other blonde dude.
When that called didn't come, she went inside to see her kids.
So I walked upstairs to their rooms and said, I need to tell you that something happened to dad last night and he was taken to the hospital and Dad passed away early this morning. I didn't really know how to express to my child, like what words that you're supposed to use. And I just remember looking at Scout and it's our fifteen year old. She's got the big Disney princess eyes where they just welled up in tears.
So I'm laying there with Bolt, like with my children, and not really making sense of it all, but just feeling pain, absolute pain. Within minutes, I received calls from dozens of people. Is it real?
I'm like as far as I know, I think so.
Yeah. And then shortly after that, one of our best friends called and said I just saw on the news, And at that point in time, my heart shattered. I'm like, how the fuck is this already on the news?
Thank you?
RAINA seven oh one and the breaking news.
A tech executive is dead.
He was stabbed in San Francisco south of Market Street.
Yeah.
The latest reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of cash App.
Someone out there has already run doing the media saying, you know, cash app founder Bob Lee stabbed to death.
He's widely known as the founder of cash app, a popular mobile payment service.
He is a giant in the tech field.
His death certainly sending shockwaves through the tech community.
Here.
I was on the phone with my father and I started crying. I'm like, Dad, I gotta go. Bob's on the news.
Police officers rushed out there, but by the time they got there, the killer or killers were long gone.
The initial wave of news stories are pretty bare bones. They mentioned Bob's name and the fact that he was killed, but they don't mention a suspect or a weapon. Then the story changes at eight oh one, PM the night of April fourth, only eighteen hours after Bob was stabbed, a retired MMA fighter named Jake Shields goes on Twitter and posts quote, I just found out that my good friend was killed last night while walking in San Francisco.
He was in the good part of town and appears to have been targeted in a random mugging slash attack. Suck San Francisco. Nowadays, Jake is a podcast host. He's interviewed holocaust deniers and white nationalists, but at the time he was simply a semi famous guy on Twitter. Soon more voices join in, many identifying as venture capitalists and tech founders. We've trimmed these tweets for length. Rip at crazy Bob, this is fucking horrific. Fuck you SF politicians.
Fuck you. Can we please stand up and completely purge SF politics now and start over? How many more of these are we going to see? Another? One reads Chase A. Boudin and the criminal loving city council that enabled him in a lawless SF for years have Bob's literal blood on their hands. This last tweet was referencing Chase A. Boudin, a progressive da who ran on policies like bail reform and reducing the prison population. He was removed from office
after a very contentious recall vote. By the time Bob was killed, members of the tech industry had been rallying for months around the message that crime in San Francisco was out of control, and now one of their own was dead. That's when the richest man in the world chimes in, taking the to a whole new level of infamy. At two twenty seven am, Elon Musk tweets very sorry to hear that many people I know have been severely assaulted. Violent crime in San Francisco is horrific and even if
attackers are caught, they are often released immediately. Is the city taking stronger action to incarcerate repeat offenders at Brook Jenkins SF.
So I woke up, I remember early in the morning to that tweet already being in my inbox.
That's Brook Jenkins, the current DA of San Francisco. She was appointed after Chase A.
Boudin was recalled, and me having to, you know, out of the fog of waking up, realize what exactly I was looking at in that it was in fact Elon Musk who had tagged me in this tweet. About this case.
Were you surprised he even knew who you were?
Oh?
Absolutely, I was shocked that he knew my name at all. I think about six million people saw it within twenty four hours, and so the flood of media interest began almost right away.
All Right, here's a horrible story, then we'll talk about Trump.
The next morning, things moved beyond the walls of Twitter when conservative YouTubers take up the story.
Tech executive Bob Lee, founder of cash app, was stabbed to death in San Francisco on the three hundred block of Main Street.
This is the late Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert.
Now this caught my attention not only because it was a horrible tragedy, but this is the same block that I was attacked with.
A knife two months before this. Dilbert was dropped by major newspapers all over the country when Adams made racist statements about black people, he became a YouTuber commenting on the news of the day.
So in the eighties, I was robbed twice at gunpoint while I was a bank teller in downtown San Francisco.
He then goes on to suggest that cities are done for.
I tend to think the cities are dead. I think they're dead.
I think the next time the cities will be alive is when robots rebuilt them.
That could be a while. All right, let's talk about Trump's arrangement.
Clearly, what's happening in San Francisco is political.
This is Luke Rudkowski, a prominent nine to eleven truther and an Alex Jones acolyte.
The latest high profile incident that happened in San Francisco happened where a major tech executive and the founder of cash app, Bobb Lee, was viciously attacked in the middle of the night and then lost his life at the age of forty three.
News of Lee's death caught the attention of many commentators, from those on the fringe to those who are increasingly mainstream.
Dave Rubin this is the Ruben reported April sixth, twenty twenty three, were live streaming on Rumble YouTube and locals.
Dave Rubin is a conservative YouTuber channel has almost three million subscribers.
And it's not just that they're pushing all of the gender stuff and the race stuff and that they lied about COVID and everything else. It's that there is also an unbelievable amount of crime happening in blue cities right now. You know what, We cover it all the time. But the worst of the worst, as you guys know, is
San Francisco. San Francisco has completely collapsed. Elon Musk's comments are completely right, the amount of security he has to have at the Twitter offices, which is in the midst of a zombie apocalypse.
And then Ruben goes on to connect this to the city's political leaders.
Why is it the Democrat cities look like that? If you can find Republican led cities that look like that, please send me the video and I will show it and I will go after the Republican mayor in those cities that's doing it.
It's worth pausing here to ask where does San Francisco's reputation as a crime written hellhole come from. The data show that all reported crime and San Francisco is at a twenty year low. During those early years of the pandemic. Crime was also trending down overall, according to SFPD data. The exceptions that stand out include Carthieff's burglaries and homicides, all of which increased a little, but the homicide rate is still among the lowest of major cities in the US.
In twenty twenty three, the year Bobbly was killed, he was one of only fifty five homicides. But San Francisco suffers from a persistent gap between what the data show and how people feel. This has prompted questions about how crime data is gathered, and some prominent tech voices have suggested throwing out the stats altogether. This topic is kind of a minefield, and many people who are much more knowledgeable than I am have made a go at it. But what I want to get at is a feeling
a disconnect between the data and people's experiences. I remember, not long after I moved here, about a decade ago, I was crossing the street and I saw a man lying face down right where the crosswalk met the sidewalk. So to reach the sidewalk you had to step over his body, and that's what everyone at this intersection did, including me. We walked right past him, not knowing if he was alive or dead. While this kind of human suffering is not unique to San Francisco, there's something about
it here that just feels different. It's more casual, more in your face, in your daily life, on your way to work, on your way to dinner, on the walk to pick up groceries, you might see someone shooting up at the bart station, or sitting on the sidewalk with open soores on their legs, or having a mental health episode in the middle of traffic, and most long time
sam cosiscents would tell you, unfortunately, that's not new. There's research that shows that worrying about crime can become a chronic emotional state that shapes how people see the world around them. It can sow anxiety and mistrust even when crime rates are stable or falling. The research also shows that people who worry more about crime also tend to see common nuisances as threatening, things like noisy neighbors, litter, graffiti, or just visible groups of teenagers hanging out to them.
These are signs of social decline. Crime during and immediately after COVID was a nationwide conversation, but San Francisco especially was a hot topic.
Comedian Dave Chappelle was not the usual jokes and giggles during a surprise show last week, instead going off about San Francisco's high crime and rampant homelessness.
Bob Lee was killed during a moment when San Francisco had become a national punching bag based on the reputation that wasn't completely inaccurate.
The commedian asking the audience quote, what the blank happened to this place? He didn't say blank, saying the whole city was now the tenderloin. As a district notorist for crime, homelessness, drug problems.
Florida Governor Ron de Santis flew in just to dump on the city for a campaign spot.
We're here in the once great city of San Francisco. We came in here and we saw people defecating on the street. We saw people using heroin, we saw people smoking crack cocaine, and you look around. The city is not vibrant anymore. It's really collapsed because of leftist policies.
After the break, the weight of this national scrutiny comes down on a few local politicians. We'll be right back. By Wednesday night, less than forty eight hours after bob was killed, city officials could see the narrative spinning out of control.
I learned about Bobly's murder in the same way that most people did, just seeing coverage from the media and on social media.
This is Kevin Benedicto, a San Francisco police commissioner.
What you saw right away was people jumping to conclusions, blaming the house, blaming open air drug markets.
In San Francisco, a police commissioner is not the city's top cop the way there's in New York or in Batman. Instead, the commission is like a civilian advisory board that's meant to oversee police misconduct. It's basically a volunteer gig bob Ley happened to die the night before a routine police commission meeting which would be broadcast to the pub blick. So before the meeting starts, Benadicto wants to talk to the city police chief, a guy named Bill Scott.
One reason why I wanted to speak to the chief of police before the commission meeting was to ask if there was any evidence that this was linked to opener drug markets, if there was any evidence that this was connected to any and how'se individuals or anyone in a mental health crisis. And at that point of the answer was no, there was nothing that connected to those things, and all the evidence pointed to that not being the case.
What really, I think most frustrated and really disgusted me was what seemed to me an attempt to weaponize this tragedy to advance an existing political agenda and to advance political narratives about the state of San Francisco, when we were less than twenty four hours, when the investigation was still in its early stages, and there wasn't really any evidence to suggest any of those things, and all the sort of statistical data suggested really quite the opposite.
At the commission meeting that night, Benedicto decides to make a statement about Bob Lee.
I do feel compelled to comment on what we're seeing. I do feel like some people out there on the media and social media that are exploiting this horrific incident for political gain.
Like most government commission meetings, this one was sparsely attended, so he thinks he's speaking to a small group of people.
So much of the coverage in this short amount of time has been a significant amount of misrepresenting facts, of fear mongering, and of trying to exploit this tragedy. The thrust of my statement was really, wait and see, we don't know all the facts. The Department will update the public and the Commission when we do and would discourage people from reading the fear mongering and the politicization and things on Twitter, including things by the CEO of Twitter.
So I got home, I went to bed and woke up to dozens, maybe over one hundred negative responses and mentions directly in emails, including threats.
Police commission meetings are taped, and unbeknownst to Benedicto, his comments were cut into a short video clip and tweeted out by a local news outlet called The San Francisco Standard.
It had gotten I think upwards of one or two million views. I since stroked. I watched my remarks back to make sure that I didn't confess to the murderer, because why else would someone be spreading me and spreading my family bad One that said, I hope your mom gets stabbed, and let's see if you say we should wait and see when it's your mom to get stabbed.
One of the people to jump on him was Jason Calacanis, a prominent venture capitalist. He tweeted in all caps and with minimal punctuation. These are the lunatics running San Francisco, evil and competent fools and grifters who accomplish nothing except in name bling rampant violence, vote them out.
I really do feel empathy for their immediate fear and anxiety when there's violence that strikes into our community, particularly if it's sort of a subset of a community that you belong to, just have just goes home to many tech companies that are many tech workers, and so to feel that anxiety, I totally empathize that, But it really felt quite distasteful to be sort of the conclusions.
Benedicto's empathy was not necessarily returned. Jason Kalakanas, the guy who called Kevin Benedicto an evil and competent fool, is one of the four hosts of the All In podcasts. The show has nearly nine hundred thousand subscribers on YouTube, and I want to talk about All In for a moment specifically because of who those hosts are. All for our powerful tech leaders, all for our venture capitalists with connections to PayPal, Facebook, and Uber, among other companies. They
are powerful businessmen who've built up a very successful podcast. Also, they've been some of the loudest critics of San Francisco politics since twenty twenty. Here's Calacanas. Politicians are sending their thoughts in prayers.
But obviously San Francisco is still a very dangerous place, it seems.
The next voice is a guy named David Friedberg.
I used to live two blocks from where the event happened. I'll zoom out. Is it a bad tis in Soma at ring Con Center? Is it part of all that drug craziness? No, it's just a nice area. Look, here's the thing. If you park at a parking meter in San Francisco for eight minutes too long, you get a sixty to one hundred dollars parking ticket. And San Francisco
has become an upside down town. What I mean by that is I think that, like so much of the response to concerns about the powerful having too much influence over those who are less powerful, the response has been to turn things upside down, which is to give those who were lacking in the power structure everything and to try and take everything away from those who are at the top of the power structure.
Look, there are clearly differences between the all in guys and right wing pundits like Dave Rubin or the outright conspiracy theorists like Luke Rutkowski. People listen to all In because the hosts are incredibly successful investors offering business insights. But there are some key parallels too. They're freely zipping between Bob Lee's murder and unrelated topics like Walgreens and parking tickets, and they also speculate quite openly.
We don't know exactly what happened yet.
This is David Sachs, an early PayPal executive. He's probably the most prominent among the all In guys.
I think we suspect, and I would bet dollars to dimes that the story is very similar to a case we had in LA recently, that Brianna Kupfer case, where a young woman was basically stabbed for no reason by a psychotic, homeless person who could have been locked up, who has arrested multiple times but was not kept locked
up because of this push for decarceration. But this idea of just releasing these people onto the street, I just think is an outrageous abdication of responsibility by our elected officials.
To be clear, there was nothing tying Bob Lee's death to the death of Brianna Kupfer in LA. At this point, there was no suspect publicly identified and no evidence linking Bob's murder to homelessness or mental illness. It was all speculation. I should mention. In the years since, David Sacks's political involvement has only deepened, but crime in San Francisco was one of the first examples of SAX prominently waiting into a political fight.
These elected leaders they are setting loose on us a predatory, criminal or icotic element that jeopardizes our safety and makes these cities unlivable.
David Sachs turned down my request for an interview. Jason Calacanis and David Friedberg did not respond. Meanwhile, amidst the speculation, time ticked on.
Four days later, still no arrests or suspects identified in Tuesday's tragic murder of tech executive Bob Lee. Last night, police Chief Phil Scott said there have been good developments. Reportedly, a kitchen knife with a four inch blade was found in a nearby parking lot.
One week after Bob's death. Crystal Lee, Bob's former wife, was starting to pick up the pieces.
I headed out and had to fly to Miami to do something I wished in my life I'd never have to do, and that is to go through someone's apartment and pack things up and also look for evidence because at this time there was no suspect.
However, some new information had leaked to the press, including security recordings.
The Daily Mail website obtained this heartbreaking footage showingly staggering along the sidewalk leading trying to flag down a driver or a doorman to no avail.
Then, nine days after the murder for breaking news right now, it seems there might have been an arrest.
San Francisco Police Department has arrested a suspect and the murder of tech executive Bob Lee.
There was big news. The Mayor, the DA and the Chief of Police held a joint press conference.
On April fourth, twenty twenty three. At approximately two thirty am, San Francisco Police officers from Southern Station responded to the three hundred block of Main Street for a report of a stabbing. Our homicide investigators developed information that identified the suspect as thirty eight year old Nima Momeni of Emoryville, California.
Who San Francisco Police arrested thirty eight year old Nima Momenti.
The suspect is another tech executive who knew Lee.
I did not know the name. I had never heard of him before. They showed pictures of him. I looked him up. I had no idea who this person was.
Here's police Chief Bill Scott.
We can confirm that mister Lee and mister Momenti knew each other. Mister Momeni was taken into custody without incident and Emeryville, California. He was transported to the San Francisco County Jail and booked on one charge of murder.
Scott starts by emphasizing that the two men knew each other, which is most often the case when it comes to violence. It's usually not a random act on the street.
This is more about human nature and human behavior than it is about our city. This is not about San Francisco. It happened in San Francisco, and that is unfortunate. It's even more of a tragedy that it happened and at all. But this speaks to more about human nature. Fact show and research shows that most people who commit homicides know the people that they kill.
Then the new DA Brook Jenkins speaks and somewhat surprisingly, she turns her attention to Twitter. She calls out Elon Musk.
As you already heard mister Lee was murdered by somebody
that he knew. While we're not going to release any additional facts at this time, I must point out that reckless and irresponsible statements like those contained in mister Must's tweet that assumed incorrect circumstances about mister Lee's death served to mislead the world in their perceptions of San Francisco and also negatively impact the pursuit of justice for victims of crime, as it spreads misinformation at a time when the police are trying to solve a very difficult case.
So, after nine days of speculation, Nima Momeni was arrested. He wasn't, as some had suspected, a quote psychotic homeless person. He was an it guy who lived in a fancy loft just across the bridge from San Francisco. Him being out on the street that night in April had nothing to do with decarceration politics or lenient city officials. But now there were many new questions. How did Bob know Nima? Why was he hanging out with him at two in the morning. All of us were just like, who who
is this guy? These questions opened a window into a subculture that Bob inhabited a realm of casual sex, recreational drug use, and hard partying.
I started to piece things together and started kind of wondering Millennium apartment. Oh wait, I picked up Bob from some chicks apartment at the Millennium Tower Once.
The story that emerged after Momeni was charged was far more complicated than the initial speculator. On the next episode, who is the supposed tech executive Nima Momeni, Why would he want to kill Bob Lee? And what was the cost of pushing a narrative that was so off the mark? That's next time on Foundry. Foundering is reported, hosted and executive produced by me Sean Wen, Eric Mesitzi's mental producder
show Bart Warshaw is our audio engineer. Our story editors are Joshua Brustein, Tom Giles, Anne vander May, and Nicole Beamster Bower Special thanks to Peter Bloomberg, Janna Knoedler and Brad Stone. Be sure to subscribe and if you like our show, leave a review. Most importantly, tell your friends see you next time.
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