Following Lisa Marie Presley’s untimely death in January 2023, her daughter Riley Keough had to spend months settling with her grandmother Priscilla Presley when Priscilla contested Lisa Marie’s will and Riley’s right to manage the estate. But Priscilla backed down once Riley cut her a check for $1.4 million. So Graceland was firmly under Riley’s control when the most bonkers crime plot unfolded in May, in which national landmark Graceland was mistakenly put up for auction. The backstory was a web of falsified documents and forged signatures that alleged Lisa Marie had not repaid a $3.8 million loan for which she put up Graceland as collateral. Needless to say, it was all a big con. Riley and her lawyers pushed back right away, and just last Friday the DOJ arrested Missouri woman on charges of mail fraud and aggravated identity theft. Herewith follows the misdeeds of the (un)talented Mrs. Findley:
The arrest: A Missouri woman has been arrested in connection with a scheme to foreclose on Graceland and auction off Elvis Presley’s former home in Memphis. According to the Department of Justice, 53-year-old Lisa Jeanine Findley — who also goes by several aliases — of Kimberling City, Missouri, was arrested Friday, Aug. 16, 2024, and charged with orchestrating the scheme to auction off Graceland. Prosecutors said Findley planned to do that by falsely claiming that, prior to her death, Lisa Marie Presley had signed over the estate as collateral for a loan she hadn’t repaid.
The scheme: The DOJ said court documents showed Findley posed as three different people associated with a fake private lender called Naussany Investments & Private Lending LLC (Naussany Investments). Findley claimed Lisa Marie Presley had borrowed $3.8 million in 2018 from the fake lender, and pledged Graceland as collateral. The DOJ said Findley claimed Presley had not repaid the debt by the time of her death in January 2023. To settle, Findley wanted $2.85 million from the Presley estate.
The forgeries: Prosecutors said Findley fabricated loan documents and forged signatures for both Elvis Presley’s daughter and a notary public in Florida. They said she filed a fake deed of trust with the Shelby County Register’s Office and a false creditor claim in Los Angeles. The DOJ said Findley then went as far as to publish a fake foreclosure notice for Graceland in the Memphis newspaper The Commercial Appeal, announcing an auction of Graceland on May 23. When Presley’s estate sued, including granddaughter Riley Keough, who was granted control of Graceland, the DOJ said Findley submitted fake court filings.
The charges: Findley is charged with mail fraud and aggravated identity theft. If convicted, she 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. … “As a Memphian, I know that Graceland is a national treasure,” said U.S. Attorney Kevin G. Ritz for the Western District of Tennessee. “This defendant allegedly used a brazen scheme to try to defraud the Presley family of their interest in this singularly important landmark. Of course, all homeowners deserve to have their property protected from fraud, and the Department of Justice will vigorously prosecute anyone who commits financial crimes or identity theft.”
The shame: “Fame and money are magnets for criminals who look to capitalize on another person’s celebrity status,” said Inspector in Charge Eric Shen of U.S. Postal Inspection Service (USPIS) Criminal Investigations Group. “In this case, 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. Postal Inspectors and their law enforcement partners put an end to her alleged scheme, protecting the Presley family from continued harm and stress.”
This whole scheme was insane — not to mention time consuming! — and it was all built on the heinous premise of taking advantage of a family in mourning. Poor Riley Keough has had a lifetime’s worth of dramatic life events happen within the span of just a few years, and she’s handled it all with a staggering amount of grace and discretion. She lost her brother Ben Keough in 2020, welcomed her first child, daughter Tupelo, in late 2022, lost her mother only a few months later. Then she had to sort out the shenanigans with her grandmother, and now this nuttery. I hope she gets a break in the legal drama. I enjoyed her in Hulu’s Under the Bridge — she had crazy good chemistry with Lily Gladstone. And as for Lisa Jeanine Findley… not only did she aggrieve the Presley family, but she’s clearly also gone and pissed off the Postal Service. May she find the justice she deserves.
Photos credit: Mike Carrillo / Avalon
I will never understand how the woman who did this thought the scam would result in anything but lots of jail.
@originalmich yes!! It is a blessing thattge majority of criminals aren’t criminal masterminds!
She’s probably pulled sh!t like this before, albeit on a smaller scale – guess we’ll find out soon enough when the media starts looking into her background.
Right. She has to have pulled off this kind of thing multiple times to even try it. The amount of paperwork and filings she did says this isn’t her first rodeo and she’s not impaired by drugs. She sounds more organized than my adhd ass.
Judging by the methodology laid out here, she probably has filing cabinets and hard drives full of these form templates, ready to just plug in the relevant info. Most likely has done it before on a smaller scale until she saw the Presley drama, got greedy and decided to chance her arm. Arrogance always gets these thieves, in the end.
As soon as I read that US Postal Service agents were involved, I knew this lady was done. They took down the mob. A small time con artist from Missouri had no chance.
Yup. The postal service doesn’t play. She’s done.
Agree she, or she may be part of a wider group, has done this before and there was probably a slim chance she could have gotten away with it. This is high profile but you read all the time about people filing fake deeds, it’s a nightmare, and expensive, to resolve as the burden of proof is on the actual homeowner, not the person who stole/faked the deed.
I’d watch this movie if the Coen Brothers wrote + directed it! What a story. – This woman is bound to have defrauded many “little people” in her career. I hope publicity for this case also brings them some justice. – Also hoping she doesn’t become a celebrity making money off this.
I can FEEL the screenwriters collectively scrambling to write up this story, I feel it in my BONES. They have got to be trying to pitch a Law & Order style show featuring Postal Service agents, or maybe a reality show.
Like, ‘there are mail cops? NEW FRANCHISE!’. I FEEL IT.