Nicholas Alahverdian was known in Rhode Island as a fierce advocate for children in the state’s foster care system. After his apparent death from cancer four years ago, he was memorialized in local news reports and on the statehouse floor.
But Alahverdian, 37, wasn’t dead — he was living in the United Kingdom under a different name — and underneath his advocacy work was a trail of rape, abuse and fraud allegations that included multiple victims and spanned thousands of miles.
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In a 2022 interview with “Dateline,” Alahverdian denied sexually assaulting or defrauding anyone, though he previously pleaded no contest to misdemeanor domestic assault in Rhode Island and was convicted of a misdemeanor sex crime in Ohio. In Utah, where authorities have identified him as Nicholas Rossi, he is awaiting trial in two separate rape cases. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Here’s a look at Alahverdian’s trail of allegations from Rhode Island to Utah and beyond.
PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND
U.S. & World
An impressive start for a young advocate
For a time, the man born Nicholas Alahverdian went by Nicholas Rossi, after his adoptive stepfather. After ending up in foster care, Alahverdian began working as a page, then a legislative aide, at the Rhode Island statehouse in the 2000s.
His initiative and intellect impressed lawmakers — “He would read bills that most reps and senators wouldn’t read,” one former representative told “Dateline” — and with their help, he later began advocating for reforms to a foster system that he said had failed to protect him from being beaten and tortured.
Alahverdian led rallies, held news conferences and filed a federal lawsuit accusing state officials of conspiracy and other allegations. The Rhode Island Department of Children, Youth and Families denied the allegations and settled the suit, court records show. The details of that settlement have not been disclosed.
DAYTON, OHIO
Firing back after being ordered to register as a sex offender
In January 2008, Alahverdian, then 21, had left Rhode Island for college and was living in Dayton.
There, he reached out to a woman on Myspace and told her he was new in town and looking for friends, the woman, Mary Grebinski, told “Dateline.” While walking Grebinski to class at a local community college, she said that he cornered and sexually assaulted her — then apologized and pleaded with her not to speak to authorities.
Alahverdian, who said the encounter was consensual, was charged with public indecency and sexual imposition, a misdemeanor crime indicating sexual contact against a person’s will, court records show.
After a trial, Alahverdian was fined and ordered to register as a sex offender. He later sued Grebinski in federal court for defamation and other allegations, alleging in part that she “targeted” him with “criminal litigation because of her unfaithful relationships and infidelity.”
A judge dismissed the suit with prejudice, saying there was no basis to Alahverdian’s claims.
OREM, UTAH
A rape kit backlog and a charge a decade later
In September 2008, Alahverdian was accused of raping his 21-year-old ex-girlfriend, a probable cause affidavit shows. The woman, identified in the document as K.P., told authorities that she’d met Alahverdian via Myspace and dated him briefly, but broke it off after he became increasingly aggressive and borrowed money without paying her back, according to the affidavit.
On Sept. 13, she went to his home after he told her he’d pay her what he owed her, the affidavit alleges, but instead he raped her. K.P. had a sexual assault kit completed the next day, but a backlog in testing meant that Alahverdian was not identified as a suspect until a decade later, authorities said.
In 2020, Utah County prosecutors charged him with rape. Alahverdian pleaded not guilty.
A trial is set for September 2025.
SOUTH SALT LAKE, UTAH
A marriage proposal, a disputed loan and an alleged attack
In December 2008, a woman identified in court documents as M.S. accused Alahverdian of raping her at his home after they argued about breaking up.
They’d met online, dated briefly and he’d bought wedding rings after proposing, according to a probable cause declaration. But the woman described him as manipulative and said she’d loaned him money that he refused to pay back.
At his home in South Salt Lake, the declaration alleges, he refused to let her leave and threw her on the bed and held down her wrists while forcing himself on her.
He was charged in the alleged attack after his identification in the earlier sexual assault case. Alahverdian pleaded not guilty and a trial is set for April 2025.
PAWTUCKET, RHODE ISLAND
A crying baby triggers an assault
In November 2010, days after Alahverdian returned to his home state and got married, he was arrested after allegedly assaulting his wife. A police report shows the alleged assault happened during an argument over a crying baby.
She accused him of knocking her to the ground, holding her down, grabbing her neck, striking her in the face and refusing to let her leave, according to the report, which noted that an officer photographed the woman’s injuries.
Alahverdian denied the assault, according to the report, and when he was taken into custody officers pepper sprayed him when they say he refused to stop banging his head into the police car’s back window.
He pleaded no contest to misdemeanor domestic assault and was sentenced to probation, court records show. The couple later divorced.
DAYTON, OHIO
Another relationship sours and more allegations emerge
By 2015, Alahverdian had returned to Ohio and established the Community Progress Institute, a nonprofit that aimed to revitalize downtown Dayton, according to his ex-wife, Kathryn Heckendorn.
They’d met at church and married in October 2015. But in a divorce complaint filed months later, Heckendorn accused him of “extreme cruelty” and “gross neglect of duty,” saying he’d borrowed $52,000 and failed to pay her back.
In an interview with “Dateline,” Heckendorn said he once locked her in a bathroom for two days and had raped her when she refused to have sex with him.
In a divorce filing, Alahverdian denied the cruelty allegation and said the money was not a loan — it was a gift — but agreed that a divorce should be granted.
In an interview with “Dateline,” he denied sexually assaulting anyone.
MONTREAL
A professional deal goes belly-up
In February 2020, TV personality Nafsika Antypas hired Alahverdian to help market her vegan cheese company and A&E television show. Alahverdian identified himself as Timothy Arthur Nicholas Knight Brown, and he described himself as an Ireland-based Ivy League graduate with a background in public relations and international law, Antypas told “Dateline.”
She paid him $30,000, Anytpas said, but he never delivered.
When Antypas cut off his access to her website, she said, he began sending threatening messages telling her to pay him another $40,000 or make what he described as a “reasonable counteroffer.” Otherwise, she recalled him saying, he’d ruin her reputation.
When Antypas told him he was fired, she said, social media posts appeared claiming her vegan cheese was fake, as did a “fraud alert” website that had her passport photo framed as a mug shot.
Antypas said she called the police and hired a private investigator to learn more about the man she’d hired, but the investigator found nothing under the name Alahverdian had provided, she said.
It wasn’t until two years later, when Alahverdian was arrested on the rape charges from Utah, that Antypas learned his real identity.
Alahverdian — who completed one extension course at Harvard — disputed Antypas’ account in an interview with “Dateline.” Antypas paid him for “work that was performed,” he said. “I did not scam her out of money.”
PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND
Alahverdian is reported dead
On March 3, 2020, a local news station announced Alahverdian’s death, saying he’d died after a long battle with cancer.
On the statehouse floor, a lawmaker remembered him as a “very, very smart individual” who’d been a powerful advocate for change for the state’s foster youth.
An online obituary said Alahverdian died Feb. 29, 2020, at age 32 from non-Hodgkin lymphoma. He was cremated, the obituary stated, and his ashes were scattered at sea.
GLASGOW, SCOTLAND
A new identity and a new accent
In January 2022, authorities in Utah announced that they were seeking to extradite a man believed to be Alahverdian after he was arrested in Scotland under the name Arthur Knight.
He’d fled the United States to avoid prosecution, the Utah Public Safety Department said in a statement, and was a suspect in that state in connection with one of the 2008 rapes.
But in interviews with “Dateline” and other media outlets, Alahverdian denied sexually assaulting anyone and insisted he was not Alahverdian or Nicholas Rossi.
Speaking with a British accent and appearing in a wheelchair with an oxygen tank and mask that he said were necessary after a recent bout of Covid, he claimed he was Arthur Knight, an Irish orphan who’d become a businessman and was married to a woman whom he’d met at a London museum in 2011.
EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND
Two names, one U.S. rape suspect
In November 2022, the Scottish judge overseeing the extradition case ruled that Arthur Knight and Nicholas Alahverdian were the same person — a conclusion he reached after reviewing photographs and fingerprints, according to the judge’s order.
Yet, Alahverdian wasn’t extradited to the United States for more than a year, as his lawyer appealed and claimed in part that the case should be dismissed because Alahverdian was wanted for questioning in connection with an alleged rape in England, according to the U.K. wire service PA Media. No charges were ever filed in the case.
PROVO, UTAH
Facing trial
Two months ago, on Oct. 16, 10 months after Alahverdian was extradited to Utah and booked into jail, he testified during a bail hearing for the Utah County case that he was, in fact, Nicholas Alahverdian. He’d moved to the U.K. and changed his name, he testified, partly because there were two “credible threats” against his life made by people in Rhode Island over his foster youth advocacy.
To protect himself, he testified, he changed his name to Arthur Knight Brown — a name he said he’d always respected. Alahverdian would not identify the people he said were threatening him in open court. That, he said, would “stoke the fire they’ve had to continue their actions against me.”
The judge held a closed hearing on the matter and did not discuss those details in his ruling, though he noted that when Alahverdian left the U.S. in 2017, he was being investigated for fraud and told an FBI agent that he was moving to a country without an extradition treaty. (In an interview with “Dateline,” Alahverdian said he had not defrauded anyone. The FBI’s Utah field office would not comment.)
The judge ruled that Alahverdian had strong incentives to flee the area and denied him bail. Alahverdian pleaded not guilty and remains in custody in Utah County.
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