A person accused of faking his personal loss of life and fleeing the US to keep away from sexual assault and fraud allegations was convicted of rape in Utah on Wednesday, prosecutors stated.
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 probably be sentenced on Oct. 20, the Salt Lake County District Lawyer’s Workplace stated. 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 occurred,” Salt Lake County District Lawyer Sim Gill stated in a press release. “We admire her endurance as we labored to convey the defendant again to Salt Lake County in order that this trial may happen and she or he may get justice. It took braveness and bravado to take the stand and confront her attacker to carry him accountable.”
Alahverdian’s protection lawyer 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 an internet obituary said that Alahverdian died of non-Hodgkin lymphoma — Alahverdian was arrested in Scotland below 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 turn out to be a businessman.
In his opening assertion, the prosecutor within the Salt Lake County case stated that Alahverdian admitted his true identification below oath final yr. He accused Alahverdian of raping a 24-year-old girl 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 advised 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 stated, and it could’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 circumstances involving ladies he was in relationships with.
In a case in Massachusetts in 2010, a lady he was married to on the time advised 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 faculty. 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 stated they’d began courting after they met on MySpace. An affidavit in assist of an arrest warrant exhibits that she advised 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 stated she went to his dwelling after he stated he’d pay her again, in line with the affidavit. He as an alternative raped her, in line with the doc.
A sexual assault package was accomplished the following day, authorities have stated, 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.
