The former assistant accused of dismembering a millionaire tech CEO was obsessed with his boss' life

• Tyrese Haspil pretended to own the apartment of his boss, tech CEO Fahim Saleh, friends and associates told Insider.
• Haspil told the dog groomer that Saleh's dog, Laila, was his.
• Saleh's body was found in his $2.25 million NYC condo in July 2020. Haspil has been charged with murder.

Tyrese Haspil was a 16-year-old high-school student when he applied to be Fahim Saleh's assistant online. By the time the two met, Saleh had already established himself as a pioneer of tech startups in the developing world, and was a self-made millionaire.

But once Haspil began working with Saleh, he became obsessed with the CEO's jet-setting lifestyle. Haspil stole from his boss, according to prosecutors, signed emails to associates with the title "chief of staff," and hosted friends at Saleh's apartment, passing the condo off as his own.

As Saleh began to spend more time abroad working on his startups, Haspil was free to live out his fantasy life.

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He treated his friends to dinner, drinks, and a show in Manhattan. At the end of the night, he'd invite them back to Saleh's Lower East Side condo, passing it off as his own, a friend of Haspil's told The Wall Street Journal. Another person close to Haspil confirmed this to Insider. When he brought Saleh's dog, Laila, to her weekly grooming appointments in the West Village, he even registered her as his own pet. "We had no idea she wasn't his," a receptionist at Biscuits and Bath said. "He seemed to really love the dog."

It was later discovered that Haspil, now 22, had been stealing money from Saleh all along, totaling close to $100,000, prosecutors said.

On July 14, police found the 33-year-old tech entrepreneur decapitated and dismembered in the living room of his East Houston Street condo on Manhattan's Lower East Side. Haspil was arrested and charged with murder on July 17, 2020.

Read more about the story behind the gruesome killing of Fahim Saleh in our feature: "He took his boss' money and then his head, police say. The disturbing story of the assistant accused of murdering and decapitating a tech CEO in New York."