In 2008, Alahverdian, then known as Nicholas Rossi, was convicted of "sexual imposition" and public indecency over an incident with another student at Ohio's Sinclair Community College, where he studied in. Alahverdian requested that the trial be restarted based on new evidence from the Internet. A computer expert analyzed the new evidence in 2011. He was 90% confident that it was fake, pointing to a date error which only a human would make, not a computer. The judge refused Alahverdian's request for the trial as the new evidence was "not credible".