Woman Sentenced for Scamming Elvis Presley’s Family
A woman managed to scam millions from Elvis Presley’s family and even attempted to auction off the iconic Graceland estate. Her fate was sealed in a Memphis courtroom on Tuesday.
Lisa Janine Findley, 54, received a sentence of four years and nine months from a federal judge due to her involvement in a fraudulent scheme claiming rights to Graceland, as detailed in court documents.
Judge John T. Foulkez Jr. imposed the sentence, which will also include an additional three years of probation once she completes her prison term.
Findley pleaded guilty to a count of postal fraud back in February and also faced charges of identity theft. This last charge made her situation even more complicated, according to various sources.
The career scammer, hailing from Kimberling City, Missouri, concocted a story that Lisa Marie Presley, Elvis’s late daughter, had used Graceland as collateral for a $3.8 million loan that was unpaid before her passing in January 2023. Prosecutors described her as having adopted multiple identities to execute her elaborate plans.
In a bold move, Findley threatened to sell Graceland, putting pressure on the Presley family to pay $2.8 million to settle these fictitious claims, as stated by authorities. This landmark, a popular tourist destination, had been associated with Elvis until his death in 1997.
She even went so far as to impersonate a man named Kurt Naussany and created fake documents to support her ruse. One of her daring actions involved placing a false foreclosure notice for Graceland in a daily Memphis newspaper.
The scheme unraveled when Riley Keough, Lisa Marie Presley’s daughter, filed a lawsuit asserting that the alleged loan was entirely fictitious and not backed by her mother.
After her deception was exposed, Findley attempted to protect herself by making allegations about identity theft involving Nigerian scammers, but it seemed like a desperate attempt. Reporters from NBC News and other outlets received bizarre emails from those claiming to be involved in identity theft, further complicating her case.
Findley has a history of romance scams, bogus checks, and banking fraud, amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars in deceit. She has previously served time in federal prison for similar offenses.
In the lead-up to her sentencing, her defense team appealed for leniency, arguing that the scheme lasted only a brief period and that she had not gained any real benefit from it. However, they acknowledged that the entire plot was doomed from the beginning.
