Man accused of faking loss of life and fleeing U.S. convicted of rape

A person accused of faking his personal loss of life and fleeing america to keep away from sexual assault and fraud allegations was convicted of rape in Utah on Wednesday, prosecutors mentioned.

A Salt Lake County jury discovered Nicholas Alahverdian, who has been recognized and charged by authorities in Utah as Nicholas Rossi, responsible after three days of testimony. Deliberations started Wednesday.

He will likely be sentenced on Oct. 20, the Salt Lake County District Lawyer’s Workplace mentioned. He faces 5 years to life in jail.

“We’re grateful to the survivor on this case for her willingness to come back ahead, years after this assault befell,” Salt Lake County District Lawyer Sim Gill mentioned in an announcement. “We respect her endurance as we labored to convey the defendant again to Salt Lake County in order that this trial might happen and she or he might get justice. It took braveness and bravado to take the stand and confront her attacker to carry him accountable.”

Alahverdian’s protection legal professional didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark Wednesday evening.

Alahverdian faces a second rape trial in close by Utah County scheduled for September.

In 2022 — two years after a web based obituary said that Alahverdian died of non-Hodgkin lymphoma — Alahverdian was arrested in Scotland beneath the identify Arthur Knight.

Talking with a British accent and showing in a wheelchair, he denied that he was Alahverdian and claimed that he was an Irish orphan who had develop into a businessman.

In his opening assertion, the prosecutor within the Salt Lake County case mentioned that Alahverdian admitted his true id beneath oath final yr. He accused Alahverdian of raping a 24-year-old lady in 2008 after a whirlwind romance and engagement.

At trial, the sufferer testified that Alahverdian rapidly turned controlling and imply after she purchased their rings and lent him cash for lease. When she eliminated the ring and informed him their relationship was over they fought and he ultimately assaulted her, she testified.

Alahverdian’s protection lawyer, MacKenzie Potter, in contrast the allegations to an “previous puzzle from the thrift retailer,” saying that “not all of the items are there.”

The sufferer’s story had modified over time, Potter mentioned, and it could actually’t be verified.

Alahverdian, who was raised in Rhode Island’s foster youth system and later turned an outspoken aide in that state’s legislature, was beforehand accused or convicted in different assault and intercourse crimes instances involving girls he was in relationships with.

In a case in Massachusetts in 2010, a lady he was married to on the time informed authorities he held her down, grabbed her neck, struck her within the face and refused to let her depart their dwelling following an argument over a crying child.

Alahverdian pleaded no contest to misdemeanor home assault and was sentenced to probation.

In Ohio in 2008, a lady whom Alahverdian met on MySpace accused him of sexually assaulting her whereas strolling to class at a local people school. He denied the allegation and was charged with public indecency and sexual imposition, a misdemeanor crime indicating sexual contact in opposition to an individual’s will.

After a trial, Alahverdian was fined and ordered to register as a intercourse offender.

The second Utah case, additionally from 2008, includes a lady who mentioned they’d began courting after they met on MySpace. An affidavit in assist of an arrest warrant reveals that she informed authorities that she broke it off after he turned more and more aggressive and borrowed cash with out paying her again.

On Sept. 13 of that yr, she mentioned she went to his dwelling after he mentioned he’d pay her again, in response to the affidavit. He as an alternative raped her, in response to the doc.

A sexual assault equipment was accomplished the subsequent day, authorities have mentioned, however a backlog in testing meant that Alahverdian was not recognized as a suspect till a decade later. Alahverdian has pleaded not responsible in that case.