Posted on: August 16, 2024, 01:26h.
Last updated on: August 16, 2024, 01:55h.
On Friday, the 47th anniversary of the death of Elvis Presley at Graceland, Missouri police arrested a woman that federal prosecutors claim tried to steal the 13.8-acre mansion away from Presley’s surviving family.
Lisa Jeanine Findley, 53, is charged with mail fraud and aggravated identity theft. She faces from 2-20 years in prison.
Findley’s scheme was foiled in May, when actor Riley Keough obtained a restraining order against a fraudulent public auction of Graceland. Keough inherited Graceland, along with the rest of her late grandfather’s estate, through a trust after her mother, Lisa Marie Presley, died in January 2023 at age 54.
After the court granted the order, the US Department of Justice untangled an elaborate plot involving forged signatures, fake identities, and a fraudulent foreclosure notice placed in a Memphis newspaper.
Prosecutors say Findley posed as three different individuals from a fictitious lending group, Naussany Investments, that claimed to have leant Lisa Marie $3.8 million in 2018 that she never repaid. That loan supposedly pledged Graceland as collateral.
On May, 23, a handwriting expert contacted by Casino.org confirmed that the Lisa Marie signature affixed to the loan application form was forged.
When the bogus auction — notice of which Findley published in the Memphis Commercial Appeal — made national headlines, Findley then “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 is due to be arraigned later today in Kansas City, Mo.
But the story may not be over with the verdict in this case. An unnamed official with the Elvis estate told TMZ they don’t believe Findley will be the last domino to fall.
“We do not believe (she) is the mastermind behind the scam,” the official told the gossip site. “Statements attributed to the woman arrested have pointed to someone who has a loose affiliation with the Elvis world.”
