'US fraudster who faked his death and fled to Scotland' says cops have wrong ...

A Rhode Island man who faked his death and fled to the UK to evade sex and fraud charges - only to be busted in Scotland after nearly dying of COVID - has insisted he is an Englishman called Arthur Knight in a bizarre TV interview.

The suspect - who cops insist is Nicholas Alahverdian, 34 - denied his alleged real identity while dressed in tweed and a baker boy cap, and spoke in a hammy English accent throughout.

'If anyone thinks I am this chap, and have all of these questions, I would love to have them over for a cup of tea,' he told NBC 10. 'But I am not. I am Arthur Knight.'

The man calling himself Knight, who appeared sitting next to his English wife Miranda Knight Brown, then added: 'I have never been to the US in my entire life.' 

Claiming he is still recovering from the COVID infection that saw cops track him down and arrest him in a Scottish hospital, he wore an oxygen mask for the bulk of the interview and said he is too weak to walk.

" class="c7" scrolling="no"

When asked to remove his mask briefly so that the reporter could get a good look at his face, the man claiming to be Knight acquiesced and appeared to be a dead ringer for the man wanted for raping an ex-girlfriend in 2008.

And Knight also blustered when asked to show his arms, to prove that he didn't have the multiple distinctive tattoos that Alahverdian has. 

When asked to expose his arms to prove his tattoo removal scars did not match the markings of Alahverdian, the trickster evaded the question by simply rolling his sleeves up his elbow. 

'Absolutely,' he said. 'I will show you that my arm is not tattooed, either.' 

The scars in question are believed to mostly on his upper arms, which remained concealed during the interview, claiming exposing his arms further would require 'undoing my oxygen mask.'

Alahverdian also during the interview claimed to have never been to the US, despite using an American phone number while living in England and scamming Canadian food writer and TV star Nafsika Antypas.

Alahverdian - who has assumed several aliases - feigned terminal cancer and faked his own death February 29, 2020 while under investigation for crimes spanning several US states.  In an attempt to legitimize the fake death, he wrote and published his own gushing obituary.

But the 34-year-old conman's cover was blown after he was ventilated  with a life-threatening case of Covid and placed on a ventilator last year. He was arrested December 13 by Interpol, which used tattoo scars to discover his true identity.  

Alahverdian, who was released on bail while awaiting extradition to face a rape charge in Utah, appeared during the interview via Zoom, where he sat next to his wife Miranda.  

He was previously convicted for an unrelated sexual assault during the same year at Sinclair Community College in Ohio. 

He's suspected of committing a string of other assaults in both states, as well as Rhode Island, where at least four women filed police reports against him related to alleged incidents in 2010 and 2011.

He was also accused of a $200,000 fraud after allegedly taking out credit cards and loans in his foster mother's husband's name in Ohio.   

Antypas previously detailed to DailyMail.com how Alahverdian began scamming her out of about $30,000 US  in early 2020, around the time of his purported passing.

Antypas, who lives in Montreal, virtually hired Brown as a freelance public relations manager to help grow her eponymous brand, believing he was an international business lawyer with experience working in television.

'I feel really stupid,' she told DailyMail.com this week. 'I knew something was off about him.' 

She said she believed him to be living in Dublin, Ireland, at the time of their online introduction. When they spoke on the phone, she said he had a British accent and pronounced stutter. 

Rather than deliver on what he promised, Antypas discovered - after paying him $7,500US a month for four months - that the man she knew as Arthur Brown was a phony who produced no results. When she demanded to see his work, she said he threatened to extort her unless she gave him an additional $55,000US.

Texts, photos and emails Antypas shared with the DailyMail.com show how Alahverdian fabricated two family dogs and a myriad of illnesses - even sending her photos of his 'wife' Miranda in the hospital at one point - in order to avoid doing the work he promised her, based on credentials he never had in the first place. 

When she realized she was being conned and hired a lawyer, Alahverdian fired back with his own legal threats claiming she was the one damaging him. 

After demanding she respond within 'one hour and 17 minutes' to settlement negotiations, he then smeared her hard-earned reputation in a brutal revenge campaign branding her a 'fraud.' When she later hired a private investigator to look into Arthur Brown, she realized there was no such man, when even the PI could find no trace of him or his so-called wife.

Alahverdian's dodgy reputation preceded his relationship with Antypas.  

He's suspected of committing a string of assaults in Utah, Ohio, and Rhode Island, where at least four women filed police reports against him related to alleged incidents in 2010 and 2011.

He was also accused of a $200,000 fraud after allegedly taking out credit cards and loans in his foster mother's husband's name in Ohio.  

Since his fake death was exposed, more stories about his allegedly aggressive behavior toward women have emerged.