A Missouri woman pleaded guilty on Tuesday to federal charges in connection with what prosecutors called a “brazen” attempt to fraudulently put Elvis Presley’s Graceland estate up for auction.
Lisa Jeanine Findley is accused of concocting a plot to defraud Presley’s family by trying to auction off his Graceland mansion and property, before a judge halted the mysterious foreclosure sale. Findley, 53, initially pleaded not guilty to the charges in the wake of her arrest last year. The trial had been scheduled to start in mid-April before Tuesday’s change of plea hearing.
Findley pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud in U.S. District Court in Memphis, Tennessee; as part of a plea deal, prosecutors agreed to dismiss one count of aggravated identity theft that was previously filed against her. Prosecutors are recommending Findley receive a 57-month federal prison sentence; she is due back in court for sentencing on June 19.
Federal prosecutors said Findley, of Kimberling City, formed a “brazen scheme to try to extort a settlement from the Presley family.” As part of the scheme, prosecutors said Findley forged the signatures of Elvis Presley’s late daughter Lisa Marie and Florida notary Kimberly Philbrick in order to claim that Lisa Marie (before her death in January 2023) did not pay back a $3.8 million loan from a purported company called Naussany Investments that listed Graceland as collateral for the loan. Findley then threatened to sell Graceland to the highest bidder if Presley’s family didn’t pay a $2.85 million settlement, according to authorities, and posted as three different people allegedly involved with the fake lender, fabricated loan documents, and published a fraudulent foreclosure notice in a Memphis newspaper announcing the auction of Graceland in May 2024.
A judge stopped the sale after Presley’s granddaughter, actress Riley Keough, filed a lawsuit claiming fraud, and a judge halted the proposed auction with an injunction. Keough inherited the trust and ownership of the home after the death of her mother, Lisa Marie Presley.
Elvis bought Graceland in 1957, and died there in 1977; the mansion was opened to the public five years later as a museum and tourist attraction. Hundreds of thousands of tourists visit the 17,552-square-foot mansion each year, which was named to the National Register of Historic Places in 1991. Elvis and other members of the Presley family, including Lisa Marie Presley and her son, Benjamin Keough, are buried on the mansion’s grounds.
Keough said in a 2024 interview with CBS News that she plans to continue running the property and keep it in the Presley family: “I think, like, my instinct with everything is always to do what my mother would have wanted. Which is to keep it a home. It was our family’s home.”
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