Nicholas Alahverdian — former “Judicial Accountability” point man for A Voice for Men and suspected serial rapist – is in the news again. The last time we checked in on Alahverdian he had just been arrested in Scotland, where the Rhode Islander allegedly fled after faking his own death in an attempt to escape rape charges in Utah and possibly three other states. He’s already a convicted sex offender. In Scotland, Alahverdian — also wanted on fraud charges — apparently spoke with a fake posh British accent that sometimes gave way to an American accent when he was drunk.
Sorry, I know there’s a lot going on here; for more details on Nick Alahverdian’s wild ride see my post here and his rather lengthy Wikipedia page here.
Anyway, Alahverdian is back in the news again because, out on bail and waiting for an extradition hearing in May, he’s been calling press outlets with a new and not altogether convincing argument: that he’s not Nick Alahverdian posing as a posh Brit under the assumed name of “Arthur Knight,” as authorities claim, but rather a real British chap named Arthur Knight who just happens to look identical to Alahverdian and have an unusual amount of knowledge about the guy he was allegedly mistaken for.
Our man in Glasgow first landed an interview with the Providence Journal in which, reporter Tom Mooney notes drily, he spoke “with some kind of accent” and demonstrated a rather extensive knowledge of Alahverdian’s legal troubles.
The man showed great familiarity with Alahverdian’s past, including his 2008 conviction for groping a college co-ed in Ohio and the allegation Alahverdian now faces that he raped a former girlfriend in Orem, Utah, just months later. …
He said he had educated himself about these incidents in case he has to show at his extradition hearing in April the shoddy work of prosecutors, particularly that of Utah County Attorney David Leavitt, who sought Alahverdian’s arrest on the rape charge months after he faked his death in Rhode Island in February 2020. …
The man who calls himself Arthur Knight said “we’re not only attacking [Leavitt], we are attacking everything, and by everything, I include the claim that I have an identity or have even had an identity of Mr. Rossi (the surname formerly used by Alahverdian) or Mr. Alahverdian. I am not and have never been known by those names.”
This mysterious man also claimed that international authorities has arrested three other men on suspicion of being Alahverdian. “Their arrests, he appeared to argue, somehow supported his claim that he was not Alahverdian, providing one more odd twist to an already head-scratching tale,” Mooney wrote.
Alahverdian also sat down for a Zoom interview with NBC 10 WJAR. Sadly, the man calling himself Arthur Knight was largely incomprehensible in the half-hour video, due in part to the breathing apparatus he claims to need due to the aftereffects of COVID. In one moment of relative clarity, he insisted he wasn’t that “chap” Alahverdian at all:
If anyone thinks that I am this chap, and have all of these questions, I would love to have them over for a cup of tea, but I am not. I am Arthur Knight.
Though his accent is more than a little wobbly, you can totally tell how British he is by his references to “chaps” and tea — things that only a True Brit could know about.
At one point the reporter was able to get him to pull down his breathing mask temporarily to show his face, which revealed him to be someone looking an awful lot like Alahverdian after gaining a good deal of weight.
When he was first arrested in Scotland, the authorities mentioned that they had identified him in part by his distinctive upper-arm tattoos. The reporter for NBC 10 asked “Knight” to show him his arms to prove he had no tattoos; “Knight” complied, sort of, but only showed his forearms, claiming it would be too complicated for him to remove his jacket.
I’m not quite sure where Alahverdian/”Knight” thinks he’s going with this, as it would take only a simple DNA test to prove his real identity. Maybe he’s been lying so long, on so many subjects, that he’s now become incapable of telling the truth? I think he just likes being in front of the camera. He’ll certainly have plety of media attention when and if he’s sent back to the US to face trial.
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@all: “skwrl”, one syllable, emphasis on the “wr”. But you have to have the R in there, whether one or two syllables. Basically the same as @epitome said, only in one go. We have a very sassy one who runs up and down the telephone pole chittering madly at people, cats, crows, whatever, and I call it “Ratatosk”.
@QotH: Those items are, by their very nature, expendable and yet necessary. So you can make quick money by stealing them from, say, a dollar store and then reselling them for cheap to poor people. Apparently it’s a very common crime.
Mr. Master Criminal was already on probation for the exact same thing (as dispatch informed us with a hint of resigned sarcasm) and by the way he opined on the effects of cocaine in the back seat of the patrol car as we drove him to jail, that’s what he wanted the money for. He did have enough manners left to tell me “Sorry, ma’am, I shouldn’t use that language around ladies” after he uttered the words “limp cocaine dick”. The neighborhood where he and the cop grew up is indeed a bad one, poverty, gangs, and all, but plenty of decent but poor people live there too.
But yeah, a man driving around with a *couple dozen* boxes of Vagisil isn’t at all suspicious, even when he first claimed it was for his girlfriend. That statement was followed by an incredulous stare from both me and the cop; cop ventured to begin “So she needs THAT much?” He had form, as the bobbies say. And I learned of a crime I’d never thought of or seen on TV. And now you know.
Another Brit here, I think I say squi – (as in squid or squit) – r – rel (as in relative), but having sat and muttered “squirrel, squirrel, squirrel” to myself for a couple of minutes I’ve no real idea.
You know, I’ve adjudicated manual facial recognition on official documents as part of fraud prevention programs. The basic metrics don’t change, even with changes in weight, facial hair, angle of photo, makeup, coiffure — things like horizontal alignment of the ears in relation to the nose, where the corners of the mouth align vertically with the edges of the eyes, shape of the ears, shape of the eye socket… There is enough commonality in those two photos that, for a criminal case, I would demand DNA proof for irrefutable identification.
I guess it’s possible that there is no official record of his DNA in the files, but unless this joker could prove an alternate identity through DNA, the experts could likely make a solid identity determination through current facial recognition methods.
Makes you wonder if he’s as clever as he thinks he is. No, wait – it really doesn’t.
I also say skwrl, one syllable. I was about to say it rhymes with earl, but then I just learned that earl can also be pronounced as one or two syllables, so that isn’t very helpful.
A squirrel to some is a squirrel,
To others, a squirrel’s a squirl.
Since freedom of speech is the birthright of each,
I can only this fable unfurl:
A virile young squirrel named Cyril,
In an argument over a girl,
Was lambasted from here to the Tyrol
By a churl of a squirl named Earl.
— Ogden Nash
@epitome
Okay, thanks, I get it now too. Feeling a bit dense. If it was Arthur King I would’ve made the connection right away, but “Knight” didn’t click for me for some reason.
@GSS
Still, Vagisil is a weird one. I’d have thought more along the lines of snacks and sodas, or maybe other kinds of toiletries. I guess that stuff’s more needed in a bad neighborhood?
@Kaybee
I’m still not putting much faith into facial recognition. It’s terrible with accuracy regarding anyone who isn’t white, for example. And I think it’s grossly intrusive, but I’m one of those rare people who values whatever privacy I can get these days.
@Nequam
Ogden Nash… Didn’t he do that cute little poem about Custard the Dragon?
@ kaybee & QOTH
There was a bit of a flirtation with facial recognition in criminal trials here, about 20 years ago.
It sort of went out of fashion though for forensic purposes.
Part of that was that the ‘experts’ that gave evidence as to the match were usually associated with the company providing the technology. That doesn’t of course necessarily mean they weren’t trying to be objective. But obviously there are possibilities of real or apparent bias that made it easy to attack their credibility.
There were also substantive issues. Oftentimes they would have to tweak the images. It was claimed that this was to ‘enhance’ the image. But of course it was easy to make the point they were just manipulating it until it looked like the suspect.
Also they would give impossibly accurate figures. Statements like “distance was 7 and a half pixels…” So then we’d just ask them what the definition of a pixel was.
So now facial recognition is used a lot to investigate crime or identify a suspect. All the London mainline stations use it with their CCTV. But it’s less admissible as evidence in court.
Fun fact though: when you’re in a bank and you notice there’s all plinths with pot plants on them, or big stand up signs getting in the way. They’re there to provide reference points for the CCTV so they can work out how tall you are.
Yes, among many, many others. He was also inordinately fond of really ridiculous rhymes, such as here:
O Kangaroo, O Kangaroo,
Be grateful that you’re in the zoo,
And not transmuted by a boomerang
To zestful tangy Kangaroo meringue.
@Nequam:
O Kangaroo, O Kangaroo,
Be grateful that you’re in the zoo,
And not transmuted by a boomerang
To zestful tangy Kangaroo meringue.
You realize that it’s possible to sing that to the tune of “The Ruler of the Queen’s Navee” from H.M.S. Pinafore; the last two lines scan particularly well.
@Queen of the Harpies:
I’m still not putting much faith into facial recognition. It’s terrible with accuracy regarding anyone who isn’t white, for example. And I think it’s grossly intrusive, but I’m one of those rare people who values whatever privacy I can get these days.
Some horror stories about the racism in facial recognition algorithms:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/mzhang/2015/07/01/google-photos-tags-two-african-americans-as-gorillas-through-facial-recognition-software/?sh=62b0f763713d
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58462511
@QotH: Soda’s cheap. Vagisil not so much. Individual boxes are also more easily concealed if you’re stealing them one or two at a time, rather than the ones that this entrepreneur was probably finding when they “fell off a truck”.
Also, non-chain little mom and pop corner stores in poor areas aren’t too picky about how they acquire their stock if it’s offered to them cheap enough. That’s what the short-term guest of the city was going to do with his loot. I think that’s what he was on probation for. He was no criminal genius.
It’s fun living in a smallish town. This was something you never see even on “Stupidest Criminals” and certainly not on Law and Order (dun-dun).
I now picture some woman claiming “That isn’t even my vagina!” if caught with the goods.
@Alan
Thanks for the insight.
@FMO
And thanks for the articles. I’ll read those when I need to go raise my blood pressure.
@GSS
Something something pocket vagina something something vagican…
(No, not Vatican, autocorrect, but thanks for the lol.)