Nicholas Alahverdian loses extradition appeal
Former Rhode Islander and exposed fraudster Nicholas Alahverdian won’t be getting the appeal he hoped would block his extradition from Scotland back to Utah to face two rape charges and a sexual battery accusation.
In a decision posted online Thursday morning, a three-judge panel sitting in the High Court in Edinburgh denied his request saying: “The court concludes that there is no merit in any of the appellant’s arguments.”
The court said Alahverdian, known in Scotland by his former surname Nicholas Rossi, “did not, nor does he now, produce anything which would suggest” valid grounds for an appeal. “The conspiracy theories which he tendered in explanation were properly rejected.”
The judges noted that even after they repeatedly told Alahverdian to focus his appeal request on matters of law, Alahverdian - representing himself before the panel - spent much of his time reciting claims against the former Utah prosecutor who sought his return.
“We agree with the sheriff [who ordered his extradition] that the appellant’s case is, at its core, a straightforward one. The evidence supporting that the appellant is Nicholas Rossi was overwhelming,” the order reads.
Alahverdian, who is 36, faked his death in February 2020 as the FBI sought his arrest for an alleged $200,000 credit card fraud committed on his former foster father. At the same time Utah authorities were close to issuing a warrant for his arrest on the first rape charge.
An FBI search of Alahverdian’s iCloud account and cell phone records led investigators to Scotland, and in December 2021 they arrested the convicted sex offender in a Glasgow hospital where he lay critically ill with COVID.
Ever since, Alahverdian – once a familiar State House advocate for child welfare reform – has kept up a claim that authorities have the wrong man. He is Arthur Knight, he insists, an Irish orphan turned English academic who has never been to the United States – despite fingerprints, previous mug shots and identifying tattoos which have proven otherwise.
Last week Alahverdian objected when prosecutors referred to him as Rossi. But one judge would have none of it, telling Alahverdian his identity had already been determined.
In August, after months of continued hearings and delays, a Scottish Extradition Court sheriff ruled there were no barriers to sending him to Utah.
“The sheriff carefully considered the submissions made on the appellant’s behalf as to the potential barriers to his extradition,” the High Court judges wrote. “Having heard evidence from various medical witnesses, there was quite simply nothing to support that he was suffering from any mental health condition, far less one which would render it unjust or oppressive to extradite him.
“Moreover, there was little if any evidence to suggest that, on the hypothesis the appellant
does indeed have such a condition, treatment would be unavailable in Utah.”
What awaits Alahaverdian in Utah?
Utah authorities have charged Alahverdian with raping an Orem woman in September of 2008 and a Salt Lake City woman later that same year. He also faces a third charge of sexual battery, also in 2008.
Alahverdian was living in Ohio at the start of 2008, where in less than a month’s time, two female students at Sinclair Community College, in Dayton, told police he groped them while exposing himself.
One of those women took her case to trial, where Alahverdian was convicted of misdemeanor sexual imposition and public indecency. As part of his sentence, he was ordered to register as a sex offender.
A woman in Essex, England, has also accused Alahverdian of raping her in 2017. That case could delay his extradition to Utah.