A fugitive who faked his own death to escape sex and fraud charges in the US was caught at a hospital in Scotland after being put on a ventilator with a COVID infection.

Nicholas Alahverdian, 34, was arrested on an Interpol notice at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow on December 13. He had checked in under the alias Arthur Knight, and was intubated after nearly dying of the virus. 

Alahverdian - who claimed to have died of cancer in February 2020, aged 32, before being buried at sea - is being sought over a 2008 sexual assault charge in Utah.

He is accused of raping an ex-girlfriend in September 2008, with police investigating Alahverdian discovering he'd been reported to the police over similar alleged attacks in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Utah and Ohio.  

The faker, who is also known as Nicholas Rossi, was convicted of sexual assault following an 'encounter' with another student at Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio.