A Missouri woman has agreed to plea guilty to a federal charge of mail fraud related to a scheme to defraud Elvis Presley‘s family by attempting to auction off Graceland. Her plea deal, filed Tuesday, dropped a count of aggravated identity theft.
The woman, Lisa Findley, had been accused by the U.S. Department of Justice of orchestrating “an alleged scheme to defraud Elvis Presley’s family of millions of dollars and steal the family’s ownership interest in Graceland.” Her plea deal was entered in the United States District Court for the Western District of Tennessee.
While the mail fraud count carries a maximum sentence of 20 years, prosecutors said they’d recommend a sentence of less than five years, according to The New York Times.
Presley’s granddaughter, Riley Keough, inherited the Graceland estate after a battle with her grandmother, Priscilla. Keough alerted a judge in May to Findley’s plot, claiming that Findley’s Naussany Investments and Private Lending LLC had placed a lien on the estate under the pretense that the late Lisa Marie Presley (Keough’s mother) had used it as collateral for a $3.8 million loan.
Lisa Marie passed away on 12 January 2023.
"As alleged in the complaint, the defendant orchestrated a scheme to conduct a fraudulent sale of Graceland, falsely claiming that Elvis Presley's daughter had pledged the historic landmark as collateral for a loan that she failed to repay before her death," the head of the Justice Department's criminal division said in a statement.
Findley allegedly fraudulently advertised the property as a foreclosure sale beRimuovi immagine in evidenzafore Lisa Marie's daughter, 35-year-old Riley Keough, won a court order to block it.
"Fame and money are magnets for criminals who look to capitalize on another person's celebrity status," Eric Shen, inspector in charge of the US Postal Inspection Service Criminal Investigations Group (USPIS), said in a statement.
