Woman admits trying to defraud Elvis Presley’s family out of £2,250,000 and sell Graceland

A woman is facing 20 years in prison after plotting to auction off Elvis Presley’s Graceland mansion and defraud his family – before a judge put a stop to the illicit sale. Lisa Jeanine Findley previously pleaded not guilty to the two-count indictment, which also includes a count of aggravated identity theft.

Findley had claimed Presley’s daughter, Lisa Marie Presley, borrowed £3,000,000 from a bogus private lender and pledged the Graceland property for collateral as the loan before she died in 2023. Findley threatened to sell Graceland to the highest bidder if Presley’s family didn’t pay her £2,250,000, authorities said.

She posed as three different people involved in the scam, fabricated documents and even published a fake foreclosure notice in a local newspaper last May. Authorities got involved to stop the sale after Presley’s granddaughter Riley Keough sued Findley.

The case baffled Elvis fans, as Graceland is a famous museum which opened in 1982. Hundreds of thousands of visitors flock to the property each year. So when the notice of Graceland’s foreclosure hit the newspapers, suspicions were quickly raised. Ms Keough inherited the trust and ownership of her grandfather’s Graceland estate after her mum Lisa Marie died, and promptly filed a fraud lawsuit after seeing the phony foreclosure notice.

Ms Keough alleged that her mum never borrowed money from Findley. The notary who was named in the forged documents said she never met Lisa Marie or notarised any documents for her. After the scheme fell apart, Findley tried to make it look like the person responsible was a Nigerian identity thief, prosecutors said.

An email sent on May 25 to the AP from the same email as the earlier statement said in Spanish that the foreclosure sale attempt was made by a Nigerian fraud ring that targets old and dead people in the US and uses the internet to steal money. In a statement, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti called the scheme ‘nonsense’ and praised the work of federal authorities.

‘Graceland matters so much to so many people around the world – just go to Memphis during Elvis Week and listen to all the different accents and languages of fans who make the pilgrimage,’ Mr Skrmetti said. ‘All of Tennessee is glad that Graceland remains safely in the possession of Elvis’s heir and that it will remain a celebrated Memphis landmark for generations to come.’.

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