A man accused of faking his death and living under a false identity in the UK to dodge rape charges was finally face-to-face with one of the women accusing him of sexual assault as his jury trial began in Utah court Monday.
Nicholas Rossi — whose legal name is Nicholas Alahverdian — is accused of sexually assaulting two women in Utah in 2008. The 38-year-old has pleaded not guilty to the charges as prosecutors claim he used his charm to take advantage of and rape vulnerable young women.
Prosecutors are trying the cases separately, with the first set in Salt Lake County.
The former Rhode Island foster kid was found alive and arrested in Scotland in 2021 — a year after an obituary claimed he’d died of late-stage non-Hodgkin lymphoma — when Glasgow hospital staff recognized him as he was being treated for COVID.
Rossi claimed he was an Irishman named Arthur Knight and had never set foot in the US, but he soon lost his extradition fight and was sent back to Utah in January 2024.
The alleged conman even claimed that tattoos proving he was Rossi had been inked while he was in a coma as part of a bizarre conspiracy to frame him.
Scottish judge, Sheriff Norman McFadyen, didn’t buy it, calling the fugitive “as dishonest and deceitful as he is evasive and manipulative.” He ruled that Rossi be extradited back to the US to finally go to trial for the alleged rapes.
Prosecutors say they have identified at least a dozen aliases Rossi used over the years to evade capture.
On Monday, the accused fraudster rolled into a Salt Lake City courtroom in a wheelchair, suit and tie, and breathing through an oxygen tank.
His alleged victim, whose name will not be publicly released, identified him from the witness stand, calling Rossi “a little bit heavier, a little bit older,” but otherwise unchanged.
Rossi raped the woman as she resisted his attempts to control her nearly 17 years ago, Deputy Salt Lake County District Attorney Brandon Simmons alleged in court.
The victim described a whirlwind relationship with Rossi that began in November 2008 while she was recovering from a traumatic brain injury.
The two began dating after she responded to an ad Rossi posted on Facebook, and were engaged within two weeks of knowing each other, she said.
While together, the woman said she acted as Rossi’s personal wallet — paying for dates, their engagement rings, and covering his rent so he wouldn’t be evicted.
“I was a little bit more of a timid person back then, and so it was harder for me to stand up for myself,” she told the court Monday.
The relationship quickly soured after their engagement, with Rossi “becoming controlling and saying mean things to me,” she testified.
The couple got into a fight in which Rossi pounded on her car and used himself as a human obstacle to block her from pulling out of the parking garage, the victim alleged.
She finally let him inside and drove him home, but said she had no plans of continuing a relationship.
The woman agreed to go into his house to talk, but Rossi instead pushed her onto his bed, held her down, and “forced me to have sex with him,” as she was lying still and paralyzed with fear, she testified, adding that her parents discouraged her from going to the police.
She later tried, then dropped, a small claims court case over the engagement rings.
Rossi’s lawyers argued the woman made accusations years later out of resentment.
“This case is like an old puzzle from the thrift store,” said MacKenzie Potter, one of Rossi’s attorneys. “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 countered that any missing pieces are due to Rossi’s legal team pushing to dismiss evidence.
Rossi will stand trial in September for another, separate rape charge in Utah County.
With Post wires.
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