Nicholas Alahverdian faces another rape allegation from English woman he met online
Nicholas Alahverdian is expected back in an extradition court this week in Scotland as he confronts a newly revealed rape allegation.
Over the weekend, the Sunday Mail newspaper ran a story of a 41-year-old woman from Essex, England, who alleges Alahverdian – the Rhode Island fugitive charged with rape in Utah, who faked his death in 2020 – assaulted her in 2017.
Authorities in the United States have been aware of the woman’s allegation for months after she reached out to them upon learning of Alahverdian’s arrest in December, The Journal has learned.
In striking similarity to more than a half dozen other women in four states who claim to have been assaulted by Alahverdian, she told the newspaper that they had met on an online dating website and that soon after arriving in England he began tormenting her.
He flew to meet her in June 2017 and by employing unrelenting pressure, she said, persuaded the mother of two to let him stay with her rather than at a hotel.
“Every single boundary that I set, he broke,” the woman told the newspaper. “Before I knew it, he had moved in. ... Within days he was talking about getting married and doing calculations about how long it would take him to get his residency.”
“In a space of five or six days, I was completely broken down.”
Alahverdian, who is also wanted by the FBI on credit card fraud charges, demanded she buy him an iPhone and Apple Watch, she said, and in the course of five weeks managed to get her to give him the equivalent of almost $4,500.
He raped her, she said, one morning after ignoring her insistence to leave her alone and blocking her from leaving a bedroom.
After she sought police help to get him out of her home – they advised her to change the locks and leave all his belongings with them – Alahverdian began texting her ranting messages.
He claimed he had nowhere to go, hadn’t eaten or slept in days, called her “certifiably insane” and threatened to sue her.
Police in Essex confirmed for The Journal on Monday that they are investigating the rape allegation.
Alahverdian was expected back in court Monday after he failed to appear last week for a preliminary extradition hearing. A prosecutor then accused the 34-year-old man with attempting to delay the proceedings by checking himself into a hospital on the eve of his court date.
On Monday, Alahverdian, a once-familiar State House advocate for child reform, again missed his court date in Edinburgh Sheriff Court. A prosecutor said he remained hospitalized.
Court Sheriff Thomas Welsh ordered that Alahverdian appear in person Thursday with a medical report on his condition.
Alahverdian is fighting extradition claiming Interpol authorities arrested the wrong man in December when they apprehended him in a Glasgow hospital while he was hospitalized with COVID.
He claims to be one "Arthur Knight," a former Irish orphan who moved to England in recent years and has never been to America.
But the English woman who alleges he raped her told the Scottish newspaper: “He called himself Nicholas Alahverdian. He said that when his stepfather and mum divorced, he took on his stepfather’s name, which was Rossi."
David Rossi, of Rhode Island, told The Journal earlier this year they he adopted Alahverdian and his two siblings after he married Alahverdian's mother in 1996. Records show they divorced in 2003.
Rossi, who has seen "Arthur Knight's" many television interviews, says emphatically: "That's Nick. No doubt about it. I know my son."
Utah authorities have said Alahverdian was positively identified through DNA and tattoo photographs.
For months Alahverdian refused to show his distinctive arm tattoos to reporters. He's also claimed there were three other Nicholas Alahverdians around the world in custody for the alleged crimes he's charged with.
A Scottish prosecutor told the court last week that Alahverdian has refused to provide a set of fingerprints.
Email Tom Mooney at: tmooney@providencejournal.com
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: English woman says Rhode Island con man Nicholas Alahverdian raped her
