A man accused of having simulated his own death and fleeing the United States to avoid allegations of sexual assault and fraud was found guilty of rape in UTAH on Wednesday, prosecutors said.
A jury from the county of Salt Lake discovered Nicholas Alahverdian, who was identified and charged by the authorities of Utah under the name of Nicholas Rossi, guilty after three days of testimony. The deliberations began on Wednesday.
He will be sentenced on October 20, said the County Prosecutor’s Office of Salt Lake. He risks five years for life prison.
“We are grateful to the survivor in this case for her desire to manifest himself, years after this attack has taken place,” said Sim Gill, District Prosecutor of Salt Lake, in a statement. “We appreciate his patience while we were working to bring the accused back to the county of Salt Lake so that this trial could take place and that she could obtain justice. It took courage and bravery to take a stand and face his attacker to hold him responsible.”
Alahverdian’s defense lawyer did not immediately respond to a comment request Wednesday evening.
Alahverdian faces a second rape trial in the neighboring County of Utah scheduled for September.
In 2022 – Two years after an online Bill, said that Alahverdian had died of non -Hodgkin’s lymphoma – Alahverdian was arrested in Scotland under the name of Arthur Knight.
Speaking with a British accent and appearing in a wheelchair, he denied that he was Allahverdian and said he was an Irish orphan who had become a businessman.
In his declaration of opening, the County Affair of Salt Lake said that Alahverdian had admitted his true identity under oath last year. He accused Alahverdian of having violated a 24 -year -old woman in 2008 after a romance and a swirling commitment.
At the trial, the victim testified that Alahverdian quickly became controlling and nasty after buying their rings and lent him money to rent. When she removed the ring and told her that their relationship was over, they fought and he finally assaulted it, she said.
Alahverdian’s defense lawyer, Mackenzie Potter, compared the allegations to an “former puzzle of the savings store”, saying that “not all parts are there”.
The history of the victim had changed over time, said Potter, and he cannot be checked.
Alahverdian, which was raised in the youth system with the host family of the Rhode Island and later became a frank assistant in the legislature of this State, has already been accused or condemned in other cases of assault and sexual crimes involving women with whom he was in relations.
In a case in the Massachusetts in 2010, a woman with whom he was married at the time told the authorities that he had held her, had grabbed her neck, struck her in the face and refused to let her leave their house after a dispute on a crying baby.
Alahverdian did not argue any competitions for domestic assault and was sentenced to probation.
In Ohio in 2008, a woman whom Alahverdian met on Myspace accused her of having sexually assaulted him by heading towards the class in a local community college. He denied this allegation and was accused of public indecency and sexual imposition, a crime of offense indicating sexual contact against the will of a person.
After a trial, Alahverdian was sentenced to a fine and ordered to register as a sex offender.
The second case of Utah, also from 2008, implies a woman who said that they had started to go out together after their meeting on Myspace. An affidavit in support of an arrest warrant shows that she told the authorities that she had broken after being increasingly aggressive and borrowed money without paying her back.
On September 13 of the same year, she said that she had gone to his house after saying that he would reimburse her, according to the Affidavit. Rather, he raped her, according to the document.
A sexual assault kit was completed the next day, the authorities said, but a backlog in the tests meant that Alahverdian was only identified as a suspect a decade later. Alahverdian pleaded not guilty in this case.
