Woman charged in alleged scheme to steal Elvis Presley’s Graceland

(CNN) — The Justice Department announced charges Friday against a Missouri woman who allegedly tried to steal ownership of Graceland and millions of dollars from Elvis Presley’s family.

The woman, 52-year-old Lisa Jeanine Findley, is accused of orchestrating a failed foreclosure attempt on Presley’s former home by claiming that his daughter Lisa Marie Presley had pledged Graceland as collateral for a loan that she did not repay before she died.

Findley is charged with mail fraud and aggravated identity theft. Prosecutors say she also goes by the aliases Lisa Holden, Lisa Howell, Gregory Naussany, Kurt Naussany, Lisa Jeanine Sullins, and Carolyn Williams.

She was arrested Friday morning, the Justice Department said, and will appear in federal court in Missouri this afternoon. A lawyer is not listed in court filings. News of the arrest coincides with the anniversary of the elder Presley’s death. The singer died of a heart attack on August 16, 1977 at age 42.

According to court documents, Findley posed as various employees of a fake private lender company named Naussany Investments & Private Lending LLC from which she claimed that Lisa Marie Presley borrowed $3.8 million. Prosecutors say such a loan was never made.

To settle the false claim after Lisa Marie Presley’s death in 2023, Findley tried to get $2.85 million from Elvis Presley’s family by filing false foreclosure documents, deeds and claims in court, according to prosecutors.

In May, the foreclosure sale was blocked following a lawsuit from Elvis’s granddaughter, Danielle Riley Keough, who took ownership of Graceland after her mother passed away in January 2023. Naussany Investments then dropped its foreclosure efforts.

When the alleged scheme was widely reported on, prosecutors say Findley wrote to media outlets, local courts and Presley’s family to try and blame the scheme on an identity thief in Nigeria.

In previous reporting, an individual responded to CNN’s request for comment from an email address associated with Naussany Investments in a mixture of English and Luganda, a language spoken primarily in Uganda.

“I didn’t win this one. I’ve stole (sic) many identities and received monies, we don’t win all,” the person wrote.

A Chancery Court in Tennessee determined in May that the planned foreclosure auction of Graceland – scheduled for the following day – would irreparably harm Keough and ruled that the foreclosure would be postponed pending further hearings to determine who maintained the rights to the property.

The Tennessee attorney general’s office turned its investigation into the matter over to the Justice Department earlier this summer.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2024 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.