Ex-personal assistant of NY tech entrepreneur who was found decapitated and dismembered in his Manhattan apartment arrested; Tyrese Haspil murdered his boss who caught embezzling – police
Fahim Saleh’s personal assistant Tyrese Devon Haspil, 21, was arrested early Friday over Monday’s grisly murder and dismemberment in the victim’s Manhattan condo
Haspil is expected to be charged with second degree murder
Detectives believe Saleh was killed after he found out his assistant had embezzled tens of thousands of dollars from him
The slaying occurred even after Saleh set up a payment plan for Haspil to repay the money he allegedly stole instead of reporting him to police
Autopsy revealed Saleh was immobilized with a stun gun before being stabbed multiple times inside his upscale East Side apt on Monday, a day before his body was found by his sister
Haspil is alleged to have used his credit card after the murder to purchase a power saw and cleaning products at Home Depot
Authorities believe the killer returned to Saleh’s apartment a day later to clean up and dismember the tech entrepreneur’s body
Haspil police said, had to make a hasty retreat after he was interrupted by Saleh’s sister
The former personal assistant of Fahim Saleh, the tech entrepreneur who was found decapitated and dismembered Tuesday in his Manhattan apt, was arrested early Friday The killing was because the millionaire entrepreneur discovered the assistant, Tyrese Haspil, had stolen thousand from him
The former personal assistant of Fahim Saleh, the tech entrepreneur who was found decapitated and dismembered in his luxury East Side Manhattan condominium, has been arrested.
Tyrese Devon Haspil, 21, was arrested early Friday over the grisly murder of the 33-year-old in his Lower East Side apartment earlier this week
Three days after Saleh’s sister found his dismembered body, police are beginning to piece together the events that led to his killing. They already knew that a man dressed in a black suit followed Saleh from his building’s elevator to his apartment, used a stun gun to immobilize him before the gruesome murder on Monday.
Investigators say Tyrese Devon Haspil [photo], the 21-year-old former personal assistant of Fahim Saleh, killed the tech entrepreneur on Monday, then came back to decapitate and dismember the body on Tuesday in the victim’s Manhattan apt. He was arrested early Friday
Haspil, who worked as Saleh’s personal assistant, is expected to be charged with second degree murder and other counts.
Detectives believe Saleh was killed after he found out his assistant had stolen tens of thousands of dollars from him.
The slaying occurred even after Saleh set up a payment plan for Haspil to repay the money he allegedly stole instead of reporting him to authorities.
Police, who have not yet announced Haspil’s arrest, believe Saleh was killed on Monday, which is a day before his body was found by his sister when she went to his apartment.
Investigators believe the killer returned to Saleh’s apartment on Tuesday to clean up and dismember the tech entrepreneur’s body.
The killer however, was interrupted when Saleh’s sister, stopping by to check on him, buzzed his apartment.
Police believe that when Saleh’s sister interrupted the killer he fled the apartment through a back exit.
When the victim’s sister discovered the body, it had been decapitated and dismembered. His torso was found in the corner of his living room, with his head, arms, and legs separated into plastic bags.
An electric saw that was still plugged in, a vacuum cleaner and cleaning products were found nearby.
Autopsy results released on Thursday revealed that Saleh was tasered and then stabbed multiple times before being dismembered.
Saleh had last been seen alive just over 25 hours prior to his body being discovered.
Surveillance footage from inside the 265 East Houston apartment building showed Saleh walking into an elevator at about 1.40pm on Monday with the assailant – dressed in a black suit, tie, mask and holding a large bag – following closely behind him.
Investigators say Saleh, who was dressed in shorts and a t-shirt, appeared suspicious when the masked-man fumbled with the elevator, which requires the use of a key fob to operate.
As the doors opened directly in Saleh’s full-floor apartment on the seventh-floor, words were said to be exchanged between the pair before the tech guru collapsed to the ground.
A struggle then ensured between Saleh and the assailant but the elevator doors closed, obscuring the camera’s view of what happened next.
When the killer returned the following day to clean up, police believe the masked butcher may have been interrupted by Saleh’s sister when she stopped by her brother’s apartment to check in on him, having not seen or heard from him in more than a day.
The NYPost reports that the sister likely pressed the buzzer of Saleh’s apartment before entering the building, alerting the killer and forcing him to abandon his efforts to dispose of the remains.
The killer is believed to have fled the building through a fire escape while his victim’s sibling rode the elevator up, police said.
Saleh, who was born in Saudi Arabia but grew up in New York in a Bengali family, bought his luxury apartment for $2.25 million last year, records show.
Police sources said initially they believed the murder was financially motivated and likely the fatal result of a soured business deal.
Prior to the personal assistant’s arrest, investigators had been looking into Saleh’s business affairs for any possible motives or suspects.
Saleh was the chief executive officer of a ride-hailing motorcycle startup called Gokada that began operating in Nigeria in 2018.
The firm, Gokada, recently faced severe setbacks after being banned earlier this year by the Nigerian government. It was forced to lay off staff and pivot from being a ride-sharing service to a delivery courier.
The ban came at a difficult moment for Gokada which had just raised $5.3 million in funding from Rise Capital, a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm, in May 2019.
Fahim Saleh who credited his love of computer games as a teen to developing Nigeria motorbike-sharing app that drew in millions of dollars from investors, was born in July 1986 into a middle-class Bengali family in Saudi Arabia. His parents eventually settled in Rochester, New York with their Fahim and his two sisters, Rif and Ruby.
Relatives said that even as a youngster, Saleh was said to already be dreaming of earning money and found that his interest in computers could help to realize those dreams.
As a young teen, his enthusiasm for the internet which was still in its infancy at the time, led him to researching Google’s founder and other big tech names during the dot com boom of the late 1990s.
After spending hours playing computer games, the would be tech CEO decided to turn his computer wizardry to building a website. His adventurous spirit led to expansion into several ventures including KickBack Apps which owns four apps, including Prank Dial, which provides pre-recorded prank calls.
His biography illustrates his simple startup site for his family aptly named Salehfamily.com, that would draw in around five visitors a month, grew into major business.
Developing a knack for programming in his mid teen Saleh set up a blogging site just for his friends. – teenhangout.com ended up turning into a blogging forum for the community as more people heard about the site and began to publish articles. Finally, money slowly began to come in to the tune of around $3 a month.
By high school Saleh was drawing a profit of between $100,000 and $150,000 a year as he created websites that focused on young people.
Saleh’s current focus reportedly, was on a Nigerian bike-based taxi service app called Gokada – which in it’s first year of operations offered 5000 rides daily in the city of Lagos motorbikes
While attending Bentley University in Boston, where he studied Computer Information Systems, Saleh developed a Facebook app which allowed students to have food delivered.
Next was a phone-pranking app that would let a user choose a prank call before calling up their friends to hear their surprised reaction. The crank calls started off generating about $20 a day but soon grew to $1,000. Saleh notes in one article that PrankDial.com has generated $10million during its lifetime.
The steady stream from the website which still brings in about $1-2million a year and allowed Saleh to set up more companies including TapFury, an entertainment company, and Ninja Fish which had a focus on gaming.
His current focus was on a Nigerian transport service app called Gokada, a motorbike based Uber-like ride sharing service for bikes, in Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city,which he co-founded in 2018.
After a successful first year of operation, Gokada was said to have secured 1,000 bikes giving around 5,000 rides daily across the super crowded city, the firm ran into difficulty in February of this year after Lagos became one of the states in that country to ban the use of all non-four wheeled vehicles for commercial transport in their metropolitan areas.
After a ban on the use of two-wheel vehicles as taxis by the Lagos state govt sidelined the more than 1000 bikes acquired by Gokada, Saleh re-purposed the bike venture into a courier service
The ventured ceased being profitable forcing the company to lay off around 800 bikers working for Gorkada. Worse, the ban came at a difficult moment for Gokada which had just raised $5.3 million in funding from Rise Capital, a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm, in May 2019.
‘As a business, we kind of have to just roll with the punches and a lot of those people that we had to lay off were very focused on the transport sector of the business,’ Saleh said in an interview earlier this year.
The company since attempted to re-purpose and become a delivery and logistics company with a new boat hailing service before the global pandemic put future plans on hold.
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