Missouri woman pleads guilty in brazen plot to sell Graceland

A Missouri woman pleaded guilty Tuesday to a federal charge accusing her of concocting a brazen plot to defraud Elvis Presley’s family by trying to auction off his Graceland mansion and property before a judge halted the mysterious foreclosure sale.

During a hearing in front of a Memphis federal judge, Lisa Jeanine Findley pleaded guilty to a charge of mail fraud related to the scheme. She previously pleaded not guilty to the two-count indictment, which also includes a count of aggravated identity theft that will now be dropped.

When asked by the judge if Findley was admitting guilt and accepting responsibility, she said “Yes.” Findley will be sentenced on June 19. She would have faced up to 20 years if convicted, but she is expected to receive less than that under the plea deal.

Findley posed 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, prosecutors said. A judge stopped the sale after Presley’s granddaughter Riley Keough sued.

Experts were baffled by the attempt to sell off one of the most storied pieces of real estate in the country using names, emails and documents that were quickly suspected to be phony.

Findley, of Kimberling City, falsely claimed Presley’s daughter Lisa Marie Presley borrowed $3.8 million from a bogus private lender and had pledged Graceland as collateral for the loan before her death in January 2023, prosecutors alleged when she was charged in August 2024. She then threatened to sell Graceland to the highest bidder if Presley’s family didn’t pay a $2.85 million settlement, according to authorities.

In May, a public notice for a foreclosure sale of the 13-acre estate said Promenade Trust, which controls the Graceland museum, owes $3.8 million after failing to repay a 2018 loan. Keough inherited the trust and ownership of the home after the death of her mother. 

Keough filed a lawsuit claiming fraud, and a judge halted the proposed auction with an injunction. Naussany Investments and Private Lending — the bogus lender authorities say Findley created — said Lisa Marie Presley had used Graceland as collateral for the loan, according to the foreclosure sale notice. Keough’s lawsuit alleged that Naussany presented fraudulent documents regarding the loan in September 2023 and that Lisa Marie Presley never borrowed money from Naussany. 

Kimberly Philbrick, the notary whose name is listed on Naussany’s documents, indicated she never met Lisa Marie Presley nor notarized any documents for her, according to the estate’s lawsuit. The judge said the notary’s affidavit brings into question “the authenticity of the signature.”

The judge halted the foreclosure sale of the beloved Memphis tourist attraction, saying Elvis Presley’s estate could be successful in arguing that a company’s attempt to auction Graceland was fraudulent.

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 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 U.S. and uses the internet to steal money.

The Tennessee attorney general’s office had been investigating the Graceland controversy, then confirmed in June that it handed the probe over to federal authorities.

A statement emailed to The Associated Press after the judge stopped the sale said Naussany would not proceed because a key document in the case and the loan were recorded and obtained in a different state, meaning “legal action would have to be filed in multiple states.” The statement, sent from an email address listed in court documents, did not specify the other state.

Elvis bought Graceland in 1957 and died there in 1977 and about five years later the mansion was opened to the public 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. Visitors can then stop at the large Presley-themed entertainment complex across the street.

Elvis and other members of the Presley family, including Lisa Marie Presley and her son Benjamin Keough, who died by suicide in 2020, are buried on the mansion’s grounds. 

Keough, who starred in the television series hit “Daisy Jones and the Six,” said in a 2024 interview with CBS News that she plans to continue running the beloved property and keep the mansion in the family. Keough and her husband Ben Smith-Peterson have a daughter, Tupelo, who is Elvis’ first great-grandchild. 

“I think, like, my instinct with everything is always to do what my mother would have wanted. Which is to keep it a home,” Keough told CBS News last year. “It was our family’s home.”