An American sex offender accused of faking his own death and fleeing the country to avoid a rape charge following a historic MySpace meet-up will be extradited to the United States, a judge in Scotland ruled on Wednesday.
The judgment marks the start of the next chapter in the curious case of Nicholas Alahverdian, as he is known in the United States, or Nicholas Rossi, as he is known in Scotland, or Arthur Knight, as he is known in other parts of Europe.
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The judge who signed off on the extradition called the man believed to be Alahverdian “as dishonest and deceitful as he is evasive and manipulative.”
Alahverdian had fought his return after being arrested in December 2021 at a Glasgow hospital where he was being treated for COVID-19 and on a ventilator. Since then, he has appeared in court as well as on several TV news shows claiming he was everyone from an Irish orphan who has never set foot in the U.S. to the victim of mistaken identity who had been tattooed while in a coma by authorities who were trying to frame him by marking his body identical to that of a wanted man and of surreptitiously taking his fingerprints.
In recent months, Alahverdian has appeared next to a woman who has claimed to be his wife. He told NBC News in April that he wants “privacy” and “would like to go back to being a normal husband, but I can’t because I can’t breathe, I can’t walk.” He also blamed the media for the unwanted attention around him and claimed he was the victim.
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Judge Norman McFadyen of Edinburgh Sheriff Court dismissed such claims of mistaken identity, however, calling them “implausible” and “fanciful.”
During his multiple court appearances, Alahverdian has used different accents, most of which lacked authenticity, and has used a wheelchair and an oxygen mask, though doctors claim he needs neither. Mental health professionals have also gone on record and said the Rhode Island man is faking, not suffering, from mental illness.
“These unfortunate facets of his character have undoubtedly complicated and extended what is ultimately a straightforward case,” McFadyen said, before signing off on the extradition. His ruling sends the case to Scottish government ministers to make a final decision on the extradition.
Alahverdian’s life in the U.S. is almost just as confusing.
Investigators said he had used a slew of aliases, including Nicholas Rossi, the name he was convicted under in 2008 of sexual imposition and public indecency.
In 2019, he told members of the Rhode Island media that he had late-stage non-Hodgkin lymphoma and had only weeks to live. Two months later, an online memorial went up for him, describing him as a “warrior” for children’s rights and claiming his ashes had been scattered at sea.
A tribute read, “His last words were ‘fear not and run toward the bliss of the sun.'”
There was even an in-memoriam citation on congressional letterhead, according to the New York Times, and a death notice purportedly signed by the mayor of Providence.
Six months after his “death”, however, Alahverdian was charged by U.S. prosecutors with the 2008 sexual assault of another woman he met on the social networking site Myspace.
“We don’t make a practice of charging dead people,” David Leavitt, chief prosecutor in Utah County, told the New York Times.
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Alahverdian’s DNA matched evidence from the rape kit taken from the victim, but the kit had gone unanalyzed for years.
Alahverdian’s 2008 conviction of sexual imposition and public indecency stemmed from an incident between him and a Sinclair Community College student in Ohio who told a campus cop that he had groped her and masturbated in front of her in a stairwell. That conviction required him to register as a sex offender.
