American fugitive Nicholas Rossi arrested over 2017 rape after UK agreed to extradite to US

An American man who faked his death and fled to Britain in an attempt to evade rape charges in Utah — and was about to be extradited to the US — will remain in England on rape charges.

Nicholas Rossi, 36 — who took on the false identity of an Irish orphan in his long-winded struggle trying to convince authorities that he was not the man wanted in connection to a 2008 rape in Utah — is now in the custody of Essex police.

“Officers investigating a non-recent allegation of rape in Chelmsford, which was made to us in April 2022, have arrested a 36-year-old man,” a spokesman said.

The latest charges against Rossi stem from 2017 when a 42-year-old woman he met on a dating app alleges he raped her after moving across the globe from the US to live with her in her Essex home.

The woman reported the rape to police last year. Rossi insists he has never met her.

The new charges have placed a pause on his extradition to the US, where he is charged with sexually assaulting a former girlfriend in Orem, Utah, in 2008.

Authorities say Rossi’s true identity is Nicholas Alahverdian, and that he also allegedly abused and threatened women in other states.

He also faces multiple complaints against him in Rhode Island for alleged domestic violence.

But he has fought his return to the US ever since he was arrested in December 2021 at a Glasgow hospital, where he was being treated for COVID-19.

Ever since, he has taken on a third persona of Arthur Knight, a terminally ill Irish orphan with a British accent who has never been to America.

With Post wires