A man accused of faking his own death and fleeing the United States to avoid sexual assault allegations was convicted of rape in Utah on Wednesday, prosecutors said.
A Salt Lake County jury found Nicholas Alahverdian, who has been identified and charged by authorities in Utah as Nicholas Rossi, guilty after three days of testimony. Deliberations began on Wednesday.
He will be sentenced on Oct. 20, the Salt Lake County District Attorney's Office said. He faces five years to life in prison.
"We are grateful to the survivor in this case for her willingness to come forward, years after this attack took place," Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill said in a statement. "We appreciate her patience as we worked to bring the defendant back to Salt Lake County so that this trial could take place and she could get justice. It took courage and bravery to take the stand and confront her attacker to hold him accountable."
Alahverdian's defense attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday night.
Alahverdian faces a second rape trial in nearby Utah County scheduled for September.
In 2022 — two years after an online obituary stated that Alahverdian died of non-Hodgkin lymphoma — Alahverdian was arrested in Scotland under the name Arthur Knight.
Speaking with a British accent and appearing in a wheelchair, he denied that he was Alahverdian and claimed that he was an Irish orphan who had become a businessman.
In his opening statement, the prosecutor in the Salt Lake County case said that Alahverdian admitted his true identity under oath last year. He accused Alahverdian of raping a 24-year-old woman in 2008 after a whirlwind romance and engagement.
At trial, the victim testified that Alahverdian quickly became controlling and mean after she bought their rings and lent him money for rent. When she removed the ring and told him their relationship was over, they fought and he eventually assaulted her, she testified.
Alahverdian’s defense lawyer, MacKenzie Potter, compared the allegations to an “old puzzle from the thrift store,” saying that “not all the pieces are there.”
The victim’s story had changed over time, Potter said, and it can’t be verified.
Alahverdian, who was raised in Rhode Island’s foster youth system and later became an outspoken aide in that state’s legislature, was previously accused or convicted in other assault and sex crimes cases involving women with whom he was in relationships.
In a case in Massachusetts in 2010, a woman he was married to at the time told authorities he held her down, grabbed her neck, struck her in the face, and refused to let her leave their home following an argument over a crying baby.
Alahverdian pleaded no contest to misdemeanor domestic assault and was sentenced to probation.
In Ohio in 2008, a woman whom Alahverdian met on MySpace accused him of sexually assaulting her while walking to class at a local community college. He denied the allegation and was charged with public indecency and sexual imposition, a misdemeanor crime indicating sexual contact against a person’s will.
After a trial, Alahverdian was fined and ordered to register as a sex offender.
The second Utah case, also from 2008, involves a woman who said they’d started dating after they met on MySpace. An affidavit in support of an arrest warrant shows that she told authorities that she broke it off after he became increasingly aggressive and borrowed money without paying her back.
On Sept. 13 of that year, she said she went to his home after he said he’d pay her back, according to the affidavit. He instead raped her, according to the document.
A sexual assault kit was completed the next day, authorities have said, but a backlog in testing meant that Alahverdian was not identified as a suspect until a decade later. Alahverdian has pleaded not guilty in that case.
