A Missouri woman was charged Friday in an alleged scheme to defraud Elvis Presley’s family and steal his Graceland estate, the Justice Department announced, following multiple legal disputes over ownership of the property after the death of Presley’s daughter, Lisa Marie, last year.
Key facts
Lisa Jeanine Findley, 53, posed as several associates of a fake private lender called Naussany Investments & Private Lending LLC, which falsely claimed to own the Graceland mansion after Lisa Marie, who Findley says pledged the property as collateral for a $3.8 million loan to the fake lender, died last year, said the Department of Justice.
Riley Keough, Lisa Marie’s eldest daughter and Presley’s granddaughter, immediately challenged Naussany Investments’ claim to Graceland when the firm attempted to put the property up for auction in May, arguing in a lawsuit that the company was not real and produced falsified documents detailing Lisa Marie’s loan.
In attempting to foreclose on the Graceland property, Findley filed a false creditor’s claim, created a fake deed and forged the signatures of Lisa Marie and a Florida-based notary, prosecutors allege, adding that Findley sought $2.85 million from the Presley family as part of the alleged loan.
Findley, posing as Naussany Investments employees “Kurt Naussany,” “Greg Naussany” and “Carolyn Williams,” denied Keough’s claims that implicated her, suggesting a Nigerian identity thief was behind the falsified documents and the scheme, prosecutors said.
Findley is charged with mail fraud and aggravated identity theft and faces up to 22 years in prison if convicted on both counts, according to the Justice Department.
Big number
Between $400 million and $500 million. That’s the value that the executor overseeing Presley’s estate assigned to his estate in 2020, according to Rolling Stone magazine.
Key Background
Keough became the sole heir from the Presley estate after a failed petition last year by Priscilla Presley, Presley’s ex-wife and Lisa Marie’s mother, who argued there were “issues” over an earlier amendment to Lisa Marie’s will that named Keough among the estate’s heirs. Naussany Investments filed a claim for Graceland in September, stating that Lisa Marie, who inherited the property in 1993, had pledged the estate as collateral for a loan in 2018. A Tennessee judge blocked Naussany Investments’ auction of Graceland in May after Shelby County Chancellor Joe Dae Jenkins said the estate was “unfair” to the estate. I said that The sale of the property outside the Presley family “would be considered irreparable harm.”