Fahim Saleh, the chief executive officer of Gokada, was reportedly killed by an assassin in a “financially motivated” operation after he was reportedly sued over his prank call app by a man who was jailed for using the mobile tech.
Fahim Saleh, aged 33, was gruesomely murdered in his apartment on Tuesday. According to NYPost, the murder was described as “professional,” with the blood confined to one corner of the room, tracing a nearly perfect outline around the torso.
Surveillance video from the building lobby shows Saleh enter the elevator at about 1:40 p.m. Monday, followed closely by the suspect, who was carrying a bag, clad in all-black and hooded, yet smartly dressed, sources said.
The killer wore a “ninja-like” hood and a “dark suit, fashionable cut,” according to one source.
Saleh used a key fob to send the elevator to the seventh floor, while the suspect faked selecting another floor, sources said.
There was a brief verbal exchange, then when the doors of the elevator — which let out directly into Saleh’s apartment — opened, the attacker followed him inside, sources said.
The last image captured by the surveillance camera before the elevator doors closed was the killer zapping Saleh with a Taser, sources said.
Saleh’s torso was found decapitated, all four limbs severed with surgical precision — arms at the shoulders, legs below the knees — and stuffed into plastic bags, sources said.
An electric saw was nearby — still plugged in — as was a stash of cleaning supplies.
There were no telltale signs of a struggle, nothing apparently stolen, sources said.
The killer was said to have abandoned the scene and escaped midway into the operation when Saleh’s sister showed up unexpectedly.
Before his death, Saleh was sued by a former prison guard turned criminal who was jailed for using his app PrankDial to secretly record and listen to employees’ phone calls.
In 2017, he was named as a defendant in a $10 million lawsuit filed in New Jersey by Kirk Eady, a former deputy director of Hudson County, NJ’s correctional facility, court filings show.
Eady was criminally convicted, sentenced to 21 months behind bars and lost his job after using PrankDial to listen to and record colleagues badmouthing him.
In the suit — still pending — Eady claimed that PrankDial did not make clear that it was illegal to surreptitiously tape calls in New Jersey and other “two-party-consent states” in which both callers most agree to be recorded.
Authorities had not identified a suspect or concrete motive in Saleh’s slaying as of late Wednesday, but sources said that they were digging into his companies’ finances for possible clues.
