Man who faked death by claiming to be Irish orphan found guilty of rape

Sunday World

3 days ago

Under investigation for rape and credit card fraud, the man known in the US as Nicholas Rossi, faked his own death in 2020.
A man who was accused of faking his own death by claiming to be an Irish orphan has been found guilty of rape in the United States.
The man known in the US as Nicholas Rossi, whose legal name is Nicholas Alahverdian, is accused of sexually assaulting two women in Utah in 2008.
He had fled to Scotland to escape justice but was extradited back to the US in January 2024 after a lengthy case in the Scottish courts.
Rossi had denied all charges in the case relating to the Salt Lake County attack and it took the jurors of four men and four women more than eight hours to reach their verdict.
He still faces another trial for an alleged rape in Utah County, which is scheduled for September.
According to the BBC, Rossi, who had previously been joking with his legal team, showed no emotion as the verdict was read out.
Nicholas Rossi
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The court had heard from the woman Rossi raped in Salt Lake County - referred to as MS, how they initially met online.
They had begun dating and were engaged after two weeks but Rossi's behaviour soon changed, she said.
He became controlling, borrowed money from her, would not let her drive her own car and criticised her clothing.
When the woman tried to end the relationship, Rossi pushed her on the bed at his apartment and raped her.
The defence claimed MS was resentful after losing money on the engagement rings.
They argued that she only spoke of the rape allegation after seeing Rossi in the news 13 years later.
The court then heard from the woman Rossi is accused of raping at his apartment in Orem, Utah County.
Appearing as a witness in the current case, the woman, referred to as KP said she met Rossi on social networking site MySpace in August 2008, when she was 21.
They began a short relationship but soon found out he had used her credit card details without permission to buy a computer.
After the relationship ended, he admitted he did not have the money to pay her back. He then began performing a sex act on himself and when she tried to leave, Rossi pulled her clothing down before raping her.
Nicholas Rossi leaving Edinburgh Sheriff and Justice of the Peace Court
Under investigation for rape and credit card fraud, he faked his own death in 2020 and fled the US in attempt to escape justice.
Authorities suspected he was somewhere in the UK.
That same year, Rossi married his wife Miranda in Bristol.
He came to the attention of authorities when he was identified at Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow in December 2021 while being treated for Covid-19 under the name Arthur Knight.
He created this alias under the guise of being 'an Irish orphan' before his true identity was uncovered by police.
He was arrested after being identified by his distinctive tattoos as a person the US authorities wanted to extradite, but claimed this was a case of mistaken identity.
Months of court proceedings in Edinburgh followed but in November 2022, Sheriff Norman McFadyen determined the man claiming to be Knight was indeed Rossi.
An extradition hearing took place in June 2023, with Sheriff McFadyen ruling there was no barrier to Rossi's extradition.
In his Scottish hearings, Rossi would appear in a wheelchair and sometimes with an oxygen mask.
An extradition warrant was signed in September 2023 and Rossi was finally sent to the US in January 2024.
Prosecutors in the US say they have identified at least a dozen aliases Rossi used over the years to evade capture.
Rossi grew up in foster homes in Rhode Island and had returned to the state before allegedly faking his death.
An obituary published online claimed he died on February 29 2020 of late-stage non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
State police, along with Rossi's former lawyer and a former foster family, cast doubt on whether he was dead.
A year later, hospital staff in Scotland recognised his tattoos from an Interpol notice and alerted authorities.
He was extradited to Utah in January 2024.
'This case is like an old puzzle from the thrift store,' said MacKenzie Potter, one of Rossi's lawyers.
'It's 13 years old, not all the pieces are there, some pieces are from a different puzzle. And when you start going through everything, you're not going to get a complete picture.'
Prosecutors pushed back, saying that if any 'puzzle pieces' are missing, it is because Rossi's lawyers fought to have some evidence dismissed.