Evan Agostini/Business Wire
- Prosecutors charged a Missouri woman in a scheme to steal Graceland from Elvis Presley's family.
- Lisa Jeanine Findley, 53, faces fraud and ID theft charges, carrying two to 20 years in prison.
- The scheme could have cost Presley's granddaughter, Riley Keough, and family members millions: DOJ
A Missouri woman was arrested Friday in connection to a scheme 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, 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 plot first came to light this spring as part of a legal battle waged by Presley's granddaughter, the actor Riley Keough, who has owned the 13.8-acre Memphis property since her mother, Lisa Marie Presley, died in January 2023.
Keough had sued a company that claimed it owned the rights to Graceland, and a judge ruled in Keough's favor in May. Since then, federal prosecutors in Missouri pieced together an intricate case 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 Lisa Marie Presley had borrowed $3.8 million from Naussany in 2018, putting up Graceland as collateral, but never repayed 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 — who starred in Amazon Prime's "Daisy Jones and the Six" — did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
Findley is due to be arraigned in Kansas City, Missouri, on Friday.