Nicholas Alahverdian, who has been identified and charged by authorities in Utah as Nicholas Rossi, was also convicted in August of raping his former fiancée.
A man accused of faking his death and fleeing the United States to avoid sexual assault allegations was convicted in a second rape trial on Wednesday, according to public court records.
Nicholas Alahverdian, 38, was found guilty of raping his ex-girlfriend on Sept. 13, 2008. It was the second rape conviction for Alahverdian, who has been identified and charged by authorities in Utah as Nicholas Rossi, in a matter of months.
In August, a Salt Lake City County jury found Alahverdian, a former advocate for foster youth in Rhode Island, guilty of raping his 24-year-old former fiancée in December 2008. He was sentenced to five years in prison.
Alahverdian pleaded not guilty in both cases and has denied any wrongdoing in media interviews. His defense attorney, Utah County public defender Daniel Diaz, said they planned on appealing the conviction and declined to comment further.
The Utah County Attorney’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In a probable cause statement in the Utah County case, Alahverdian’s ex-girlfriend, identified in court papers as K.P., stated that the pair dated briefly after meeting on MySpace in the summer of 2008. She told authorities she broke up with Alahverdian after he became increasingly aggressive and failed to repay her money he’d borrowed.
The statement alleged that Alahverdian raped the woman when she went to his home to retrieve the money on Sept. 13, 2008.
She had a sexual assault kit completed the next day, the probable cause statement said. Authorities have stated that Alahverdian was not identified as a suspect until a decade later because of a testing backlog.
In 2020, Alahverdian was charged with rape in connection with K.P.’s allegations. That same year, an obituary claimed that he died at age 32 from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Two years later, Utah authorities announced they were seeking to extradite a man living in the United Kingdom whom they believed to be Alahverdian. Utah’s Department of Public Safety accused Alahverdian of fleeing the United States and of living in Scotland under the name Arthur Knight.
In a 2022 “Dateline” interview, Alahverdian claimed to be an Irish orphan-turned-businessman. He appeared in a wheelchair and spoke with a British accent.
“I do not prefer to be called Arthur Knight,” he told “Dateline.” “I am Arthur Knight.”
In January 2024, he was extradited to the United States and subsequently acknowledged his true identity. He has said he changed his name to Arthur Knight to protect himself against what he described as “credible threats” from his time working as a foster youth advocate.
Source: Utah News