Nicholas Alahverdian was a glorified and vocal advocate for child welfare reform, but he was also a man wanted for fraud and sex assault, investigators say.

Alahverdian from Rhode Island who had been reported dead two years ago as he faced charges in multiple states, including sex assault and fraud, has been found alive in a Scotland Hospital suffering from COVID, and now faces extradition back to the U.S.

He was linked in 2018 to a 2008 cold sex assault case in Utah using DNA evidence from a rape kit, prosecutors say.

Under the alias Nicholas Rossi, Alahverdian was convicted on two sex-related charges in Ohio in 2008 the Providence Journal reported.

At the time of his death, he was also under investigation by the FBI for fraud in Utah and Ohio, according to the Providence Journal.

Alahverdian was hospitalized in Glasgow with COVID-19 symptoms last month, where his DNA was entered into a database and it was discovered he was wanted in the United States. 

He had been living under another alias, Arthur Knight.

The Utah County District Attorney’s office has said that Alahverdian has been taken to custody and that the officials are working on him being extradited to the state. The district attorney’s office has said that Alahverdian had fled the country in order to avoid the prosecution and led officials in other states to believe he was dead.

It was reported by Alahverdian’s family that he had died on Feb. 29, 2020, from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma at the age of 32. A longtime vocal advocate for child welfare in Rhode Island, Alahverdian’s “death” was reported in several news outlets including the Associated Press. He was remembered with citations from politicians and even on the floor Of the Rhode Island Statehouse.

As an advocate to reform of the Rhode Island Department of Children, youth and families, Alahverdian claimed he was abused and tortured during out-of-state placements in Florida and Nebraska as a child himself, eventually exposing dangerous living conditions for children.