After Nicholas Alahverdian faked his own death, a trail of rape and fraud finally caught up with him.

PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND

An impressive start for a young advocate

For a time, the man, born Nicholas Alahverdian, of Nicholas Rossi, went after his adoptive stepfather. After ending up in foster care, Alahverdian began working as a page, then a legislative aide, in the Rhode Island Statehouse in the 2000s.

His initiative and intellect impressed lawmakers — “He would read bills that most representatives and senators wouldn’t read,” one former representative told “Dateline” — and with their help, he later began advocating for welfare reform, who 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 dismissed the charges and settled the case, court records show. The details of that settlement have not been made public.

DAYTON, OHIO

Fires back after being ordered to register as a sex offender

By 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 he sexually assaulted and 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 coercion, a misdemeanor offense that indicates sexual contact against a person’s will, court records show.

After a trial, Alahverdian was fined and required 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 lawsuits because of her adultery and infidelity.”

A judge dismissed the case with prejudice, saying there was no basis for Alahverdian’s claims.

OREM, UTAH

A backlog of rape kits 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 KP, told authorities she had met Alahverdian through Myspace and briefly dated him, 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 would pay her what he owed her, the affidavit alleges, but instead he raped her. KP had a sexual-assault kit completed the next day, but a backlog in testing meant 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 assault

In December 2008, a woman accused MS Alahverdian in court documents of raping her in her home after they argued about breaking up.

They had met online, dated briefly, and he had bought wedding rings after proposing, according to a probable cause affidavit. But the woman described him as manipulative and said she had lent him money which he refused to pay back.

At his South Salt Lake home, the affidavit alleges, he refused to let her go and threw her on the bed, holding her wrists down as he forced himself on her.

He was charged in the alleged attack following his identification in the previous 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, punching her in the face and refusing to let her go, 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 arrested, officers sprayed him with pepper spray when they said he refused to stop banging his head into the back window of the police car.

He pleaded no contest to misdemeanor domestic battery and was sentenced to probation, court records show. The couple later divorced.

DAYTON, OHIO

Another relationship sours and more allegations surface

By 2015, Alahverdian had returned to Ohio and established the Community Progress Institute, a nonprofit aimed at revitalizing downtown Dayton, according to his ex-wife, Kathryn Heckendorn.

They had met in church and married in October 2015. But in a divorce complaint filed months later, Heckendorn accused him of “extreme cruelty” and “gross dereliction of duty,” saying he had 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 raped her when she refused to have sex with him.

In a divorce filing, Alahverdian denied the allegation of cruelty, saying 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 up in the air

In February 2020, TV personality Nafsika hired Antypas Alahverdian to help market her vegan cheese company and A&E TV 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 Antipas 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 remembered him saying he wanted to ruin her reputation.

When Antypas told him he was fired, she said, posts appeared on social media claiming her vegan cheese was fake, as did a “fraud alert” website where her passport photo was framed as a mug shot.

Antypas said she called police and hired a private investigator to learn more about the man she had hired, but the investigator found nothing under the name Alahverdian had given, she said.

It wasn’t until two years later, when Alahverdian was arrested on rape charges from Utah, that Antypas learned his true identity.

Alahverdian — who completed an extension course at Harvard — disputed Antypas’ account in an interview with “Dateline.” Antipas paid him for “work that was done,” he said. “I didn’t cheat 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 had died after a long battle with cancer.

On the statehouse floor, one lawmaker remembered him as a “very, very smart person” who had been a strong advocate for change for the state’s foster youth.

An online obituary said Alahverdian died on February 29, 2020, aged 32, of non-Hodgkin’s 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 they were seeking to extradite a man believed to be Alahverdian after he was arrested in Scotland under the name Arthur Knight.

He had fled the United States to avoid prosecution, the Utah Public Safety Department said in a statement, and he 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 he said were needed after a recent bout of Covid, he claimed to be Arthur Knight, an Irish orphan turned businessman and married to a woman whom he had met at a museum in London in 2011.

EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND

Two names, one suspected of rape in the United States

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.

However, Alahverdian was not extradited to the United States for more than a year when his lawyer appealed, arguing in part that the case should be dismissed because Alahverdian was wanted for questioning in connection with an alleged rape in England, according to UK wire service PA Media. No charges were ever brought in the case.

PROVO, UTAH

Facing a lawsuit

Two months ago, on Oct. 16, 10 months after Alahverdian was extradited to Utah and jailed, he testified during a bond hearing for the Utah County case that he was in fact Nicholas Alahverdian. He had moved to Britain and changed his name, he testified, in part because there were two “credible threats” against his life made by people in Rhode Island because of his youth advocacy work.

To protect himself, he testified, he changed his name to Arthur Knight Brown — a name he said he had always respected. Alahverdian would not identify the people he said threatened him in open court. That, he said, would “inflame the fire they’ve had to continue their actions against me.”

The judge held a closed hearing on the case and did not discuss those details in his ruling, although he noted that when Alahverdian left the United States in 2017, he was being investigated for fraud and told an FBI agent 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.