- Prosecutors charged a Missouri woman with a scheme to steal Graceland from Elvis Presley's family.
- Lisa Jeanine Findley, 53, faces fraud and ID theft charges carrying 2 to 20 years in prison.
Law enforcement arrested a Missouri woman prosecutors say schemed to defraud Elvis Presley's family by stealing their interest in Graceland and trying to extort them for millions of dollars.
Lisa Jeanine Findley, 53, was arrested Friday and faces charges of mail fraud and aggravated identity theft, federal prosecutors in Missouri said. The charges carry anywhere from two to 20 years in prison.
The bizarre scheme first came to light this spring, in a legal battle waged by Presley's granddaughter, actor Riley Keough, who has owned the 13.8-acre Memphis property since her mother, Lisa Marie Presley, died in January 2023.
Keough halted the plot in May. Since then, federal prosecutors in Missouri pieced together an intricate case against its alleged mastermind that involved multiple fake identities, forged signatures, and a foreclosure notice in a Memphis newspaper.
Findley posed as three different individuals from a fictitious lender called "Naussany Investments," prosecutors said Friday. She then falsely claimed that Presley's daughter, Lisa Marie Presley — Keough's mother — had borrowed $3.8 million from Naussany in 2018, pledging Graceland as collateral and never repaying the debt, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said that as part of the plan, Findley forged Lisa Marie Presley's signature on bogus loan documents and filed multiple fake documents, including a creditor's claim in Los Angeles and a deed of trust in Memphis.
Findley even published a fraudulent foreclosure notice in the Commercial Appeal, a daily newspaper in Memphis, announcing that Naussany planned to auction off Graceland to the highest bidder on May 23, prosecutors said.
When the proposed auction became a national news story, Findley "allegedly wrote to representatives of Elvis Presley's family, the Tennessee state court, and the media to claim falsely that the person responsible for the scheme was a Nigerian identity thief located in Nigeria," prosecutors said in a press statement.
Findley "orchestrated a scheme to conduct a fraudulent sale of Graceland," Nicole M. Argentieri, who heads the Justice Department's Criminal Division, said after Findley's arrest.
Findley falsely claimed "that Elvis Presley's daughter had pledged the historic landmark as collateral for a loan that she failed to repay before her death," Argentieri said.
"As part of the brazen scheme, we allege that the defendant created numerous false documents and sought to extort a settlement from the Presley family" amounting to $2.8 million, she said.
An attorney for Keough — star of Amazon Prime's "Daisy Jones and the Six" — did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Findley is due to be arraigned Friday in Kansas City, Missouri, on Friday.