A Missouri woman agreed to plead guilty to mail fraud on Tuesday for her role in orchestrating what the authorities described as a scheme to defraud Elvis Presley’s heirs by claiming ownership of Graceland, his Memphis home, and threatening to sell it in a foreclosure auction.
The woman, Lisa Jeanine Findley, of Kimberling City, Mo., will have a count of aggravated identity theft dismissed as part of the plea agreement, which was filed in United States District Court for the Western District of Tennessee.
The mail fraud count carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, but prosecutors said they would recommend a sentence of less than five years. A spokeswoman for the Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A public defender listed in court documents for Ms. Findley also did not respond.
The case involving Ms. Findley burst into the public eye in May, when lawyers for the actress Riley Keough, the granddaughter of Mr. Presley, went to court to stop what they said was a monthslong, fraudulent scheme to sell Graceland, which is now a lucrative tourist attraction that draws 600,000 visitors a year.
Court papers revealed that the attempt had been made by a company known as Naussany Investments & Private Lending LLC, but exactly who was behind that company remained a mystery for many months. Naussany Investments had claimed in court papers that Mr. Presley’s daughter, Lisa Marie Presley, who died in 2023, had borrowed $3.8 million from the company and put Graceland up as collateral.
The company subsequently scheduled a sale of Graceland. But a Tennessee judge blocked the sale and the state’s attorney general said his office would look into the situation after no one showed up in court to represent the company.
Eventually, federal officials came forward and claimed that the whole situation had been part of an elaborate fraud.
In an affidavit filed in August in support of an arrest warrant, Christopher Townsend, an F.B.I. agent, wrote that Findley used “a series of aliases, email addresses and fake documents” to engage “in a scheme to defraud Elvis Presley’s family for millions of dollars by threatening to foreclose on the ‘Graceland’ estate.”
Mr. Townsend said in the 30-page affidavit that Ms. Findley had created fraudulent loan documents and unlawfully used Ms. Presley’s name and signature as part of her scheme.
The affidavit also said that Ms. Findley published a fraudulent “Notice of Foreclosure Sale” in The Commercial Appeal, a Memphis newspaper, executed false affidavits that were sent to the Shelby County Register’s Office, and communicated with the news media through fake identities.
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