Missouri Woman Charged in Scheme to Defraud Presleys and Sell Graceland

Federal authorities arrested a Missouri woman on Friday and accused her of orchestrating a brazen effort to shake down the Presley family by threatening to fraudulently foreclose on Graceland, Elvis’s home in Memphis, which is now a popular tourist attraction.

The authorities said that they had arrested Lisa Jeanine Findley, 53, of Kimberling City, Mo., on charges of mail fraud and aggravated identity theft.

“The defendant orchestrated a scheme to conduct a fraudulent sale of Graceland, falsely claiming that Elvis Presley’s daughter had pledged the historic landmark as collateral for a loan that she failed to repay before her death,” said Nicole M. Argentieri, the principal deputy assistant attorney general at the Justice Department.

The arrest was made on the anniversary of the death of Elvis Presley, who was found unresponsive at Graceland on Aug. 16, 1977, and pronounced dead soon after at a hospital in Memphis. He was 42.

If convicted, Ms. Findley faces a mandatory minimum of two years in prison for aggravated identity theft and a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison for mail fraud. A spokesman for the Justice Department said Friday afternoon that she had been detained and was in the custody of the U.S. Marshals pending extradition to Memphis.

Exactly who was behind the threat to sell Graceland, a popular and lucrative tourist attraction that draws 600,000 visitors a year, had been a mystery.

The case burst into the public eye in May, when lawyers for the actress Riley Keough, the granddaughter of Mr. Presley, went to court to stop what they said was a monthslong, fraudulent scheme to sell Graceland by a company known as Naussany Investments & Private Lending LLC.

In court papers filed in Los Angeles in September, Naussany Investments had claimed that Elvis’s daughter, Lisa Marie Presley, who died in 2023, had borrowed $3.8 million from the company and put Graceland up as collateral. The company subsequently scheduled a sale of Graceland to take place in May.

Federal officials now say it was all part of an elaborate fraud.

A Tennessee judge blocked the sale in May. (At the hearing, no one showed up to represent the company seeking to sell Graceland.) The state’s attorney general said his office would look into the situation, but the case was later turned over to federal law enforcement.

In an affidavit filed in support of an arrest warrant, Christopher Townsend, an F.B.I. agent, wrote that “using a series of aliases, email addresses and fake documents, Findley engaged in a scheme to defraud Elvis Presley’s family for millions of dollars by threatening to foreclose on the ‘Graceland’ estate owned by Mr. Presley’s family and auction Graceland to the highest bidder.”

Mr. Townsend said in the 30-page affidavit that Ms. Findley had used fake names and email addresses, created fraudulent loan documents and unlawfully used Lisa Marie Presley’s name and signature as part of her scheme to defraud the Presley family.

The affidavit details the lengths the authorities say she went to, publishing a fraudulent “Notice of Foreclosure Sale” in The Commercial Appeal, a Memphis newspaper, executing false affidavits that were sent to the Shelby County Register’s Office, and even communicating with the news media through fake identities.

The scheme began in July 2023, law enforcement officials said, about six months after the death of Lisa Marie Presley.

The court documents unsealed this week outlined what investigators said was Ms. Findley’s almost yearlong effort to extract money from the Presley family. She created the email address “[email protected]” in July 2023 and began corresponding with Ms. Keough’s lawyers soon after.

She then made her false claim about a collateral loan taken out by Ms. Presley and mailed a package containing a “creditor’s claim” and what purported to be supporting documentation from a U.S. Post Office in Kimberling City, Mo., to Ms. Presley’s business manager in Woodland Hills, Calif.

Mr. Townsend argued in court documents that “there is probable cause” that Ms. Presley’s signature on the purported loan documents and deed of trust were forgeries and that the bank records provided as part of the creditor’s claim were also fake.

He also wrote that Naussany Investments was not registered as a corporate entity in Florida until May 21, 2024, the day before the company was to respond to a lawsuit brought by Ms. Keough’s lawyers in Shelby County Chancery Court.

Eric Shen, the inspector in charge of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, said in a statement that fame and money could be magnets for criminals.

“In this case,” he said, “Ms. Findley allegedly took advantage of the very public and tragic occurrences in the Presley family as an opportunity to prey on the name and financial status of the heirs to the Graceland estate, attempting to steal what rightfully belongs to the Presley family for her personal gain.

Ms. Findley’s role was reported by NBC News in June, in a report that identified her as Lisa Holden. Federal officials said that Ms. Findley also went by several other names, including Lisa Holden, Lisa Howell, Gregory Naussany, Kurt Naussany, Lisa Jeanine Sullins and Carolyn Williams.

Ms. Findley could not immediately be reached for comment, and it was not immediately clear if she had a lawyer. But NBC News reported that the woman it identified as Lisa Holden said that she did not know any Naussany. When she was asked about Graceland, NBC reported that she responded, “I have no earthly idea what you’re talking about.”

The Postal Inspection Service played a key role in investigating the matter. The affidavit describes how the claim gave Naussany Investments’ business address as a post office in Hollister, Mo., near Ms. Findley’s home, where she had rented Post Office Box 1015.

The rental application was submitted in the name “Lisa Holden,” which the affidavit said was an alias for Ms. Findley, but investigators were able to use phone numbers and email addresses to connect Naussany Investments to Ms. Findley.

Representatives of Graceland and Ms. Keough did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Naussany Investments drew scrutiny in part because it had not filed any of the records typically submitted by businesses. Someone who identified himself as the company’s representative at one point emailed The New York Times suggesting that Naussany’s efforts were a fraud directed by a shadowy ring of identity thieves operating out of Nigeria. But the email raised a number of questions, including why it was written in Luganda, a Bantu language spoken in Uganda.

Law enforcement officials said on Friday that after the scheme attracted widespread attention, Ms. Findley apparently wrote to representatives of the Presley family, the Tennessee state court and the news media to claim falsely that the person responsible for the scheme was an identity thief in Nigeria.

The email address that drew the response in Luganda appears to have been shut down — messages sent there on Friday bounced back.

Law enforcement officials said that all homeowners should be protected from fraud, but that they were struck that such a famous site had been targeted.

Kevin G. Ritz, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Tennessee, said in a statement, “As a Memphian, I know that Graceland is a national treasure.”

Jan Peterson contributed reporting from Branson, Mo., and Kirsten Noyes and Kitty Bennett from New York. Susan C. Beachy contributed research.