Nicholas Alahverdian

American child welfare advocate and whistleblower

Nicholas Alahverdian (born July 11, 1987), also known as Nicholas Rossi and Arthur Knight, among other aliases, was an American sex offender who faked his own death in 2020.

Alahverdian alleged that he suffered abuse and negligence in the Department of Children Youth and Families (DCYF), Rhode Island's social service system.

In support of this allegation, he unsuccessfully sued the DCYF in federal court in 2011, then voluntarily dismissed the lawsuit when Rhode Island waived his medical expenses debt of around $200,000.

In January 2020, Alahverdian said that he had been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma.In February 2020, news outlets reported Alahverdian's death, citing his family's anonymous testimony and his obituary.

The reports of his death were disputed, as they occurred after the FBI initiated a fraud investigation against him, while Rhode Island police had a warrant on him for failure to register as a sex offender.

In October 2021, he was discovered in a hospital in Scotland, while undergoing treatment for COVID-19.He was arrested in December on charges of an alleged rape in Utah in 2008 (a sealed arrest warrant had been issued in September 2020), in addition to other alleged crimes.

Efforts are underway to extradite him to the United States.In November 2022, the Edinburgh Sheriff's Court confirmed that the arrested man was Nicholas Rossi, despite his claims of mistaken identity.