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Three months after Graceland was narrowly saved from the auction block<\/a>, officials say they’ve arrested the woman behind a plot to allegedly defraud<\/a> the heirs to the Elvis Presley fortune. Federal prosecutors say that a 53-year-old woman named Lisa Jeanine Findley<\/strong> was behind a scheme to steal the famous mansion from Presley’s family, leveraging the unexpected death<\/a> of the music icon’s daughter to undercut the family’s ownership of his Tennessee estate<\/a>.<\/p>\n Via written statement, the Department of Justice Criminal Division head Nicole M. Argentieri<\/strong> says that Findley, who allegedly went by a multitude of names including Lisa Holden, Lisa Howell, Gregory Naussany, Kurt Naussany, Lisa Jeanine Sullins, and Carolyn Williams, \u201corchestrated a scheme to conduct a fraudulent sale of Graceland, falsely claiming that Elvis Presley\u2019s daughter had pledged the historic landmark as collateral for a loan that she failed to repay before her death.\u201d<\/p>\n Argentieri is referring to a strange tale that unspooled in May<\/a>, when a company called Naussany Investments & Private Lending (NIPL) claimed that Lisa Marie Presley, who died in early 2023<\/a> at the age of 54, had borrowed $3.8 million from the company in 2015, using the deed for Graceland as collateral. Citing the unpaid debt, NIPL announced a foreclosure auction for the home, spurring headlines around the globe<\/a>.<\/p>\n Soon after the auction was advertised, actor Riley Keough<\/strong>, Elvis\u2019s granddaughter<\/a> and the trustee to the property, filed a 61-page lawsuit<\/a> that argued that the documents used by NIPL to justify its claim were forged. The courts agreed and blocked the sale; in a subsequent message to the Daily Mail<\/em>, a representative of NIPL said it would withdraw \u201call claims with prejudice.\u201d<\/p>\n The Washington Post<\/em> reports<\/a> that a person identifying themselves as Kurt Naussany first contacted Keough’s legal team on July 14, 2023, using an email address\u2014naussanyinvestmentsllc@outlook.com\u2014that FBI agent Christopher Townsend<\/strong> says was created earlier that day. In the email, Naussany threatened to foreclose on Graceland if he didn’t receive a response within 10 days. When more information on the supposed loan was requested, Naussany responded with a pack of documents that Townsend later determined to be forgeries. According to the DOJ, Naussany demanded a $2.85 million payment to settle the debt. (Vanity Fair<\/em> has reached out to Keogh’s representatives for comment, but have not received a response as of publication time.)<\/p>\n After Keough refused to meet \u201cNaussany’s\u201d demands, he filed a Los Angeles collections claim, and moved forward on the foreclosure claim the following year. Once Keough’s suit averted the foreclosure, public attention turned to who was behind NIPL, a company with little public presence in the states it claimed to operate. A self-described identity thief based in Nigeria suggested to the New York Times<\/em><\/a> that his “network of ‘worms'” was behind the con, while CNN reported<\/a> that someone using a language primarily spoken by residents of Uganda contacted them to claim responsibility.<\/p>\n But according a June report from NBC<\/a>, the prime suspect was alleged to be Findley, a Branson, Missouri grandmother \u201cwith a decades-long rap sheet of romance scams, forged checks and bank fraud totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars, for which she did time in state and federal prison.\u201d<\/p>\n According to NBC, which says it found Findlay via email accounts used to post “negative reviews for people and businesses she didn\u2019t like,” a former roommate of Findlay’s went to the FBI after Findlay allegedly described details of the scam, claiming she was \u201cgoing to get a couple of million dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n