The Graceland Heist: How a Convicted Fraudster Nearly Stole Elvis Presley's Home
In 2024, a Missouri woman forged documents claiming Elvis Presley's estate owed $3.8 million and tried to auction off Graceland. Here's how the scheme worked, how it was stopped, and what it reveals about property deed fraud in America.
Mo Ayadi
Founder, Title Barrier | Property Fraud Prevention
By Mo Ayadi, Founder of Title Barrier | Updated February 11, 2026
In May 2024, a notice appeared in The Commercial Appeal, one of Memphis's daily newspapers, announcing that Graceland would be auctioned to the highest bidder on May 23. Elvis Presley's iconic 14-acre estate, one of the most visited homes in the United States, was apparently going to the auction block.
The notice came from a company called Naussany Investments & Private Lending LLC. It claimed that Lisa Marie Presley, Elvis's only child, had borrowed $3.8 million in 2018 and pledged Graceland as collateral. Since Lisa Marie had died in January 2023 without repaying the loan, Naussany Investments said it was exercising its right to foreclose.
None of it was true. There was no loan. There was no lender. The documents were forged. And the person behind the entire scheme was not a sophisticated financial criminal or an international fraud ring. It was a 53-year-old grandmother from the Ozark Mountains of Missouri with a long history of small-time scams.
This is the story of the most brazen property fraud attempt in recent American history, how it was stopped, and what it reveals about how vulnerable the American property recording system really is.
The Scheme
According to federal prosecutors and court documents, the scheme began in July 2023, roughly six months after Lisa Marie Presley's death.
Lisa Jeanine Findley, operating from her home in Kimberling City, Missouri (near Branson), created a fictitious company called Naussany Investments & Private Lending LLC. She then fabricated loan documents claiming Lisa Marie Presley had borrowed $3.8 million and signed a deed of trust using Graceland as collateral.
The documents bore what appeared to be Lisa Marie Presley's signature. They also bore the forged signature of a real Florida notary named Kimberly Philbrick, who later submitted an affidavit to the court stating she had never met Lisa Marie Presley and never notarized any documents for her.
Posing as a person named Kurt Naussany, Findley emailed lawyers for Riley Keough, Elvis's granddaughter and the sole trustee of the estate following her mother's death. The emails demanded payment on the fictitious loan.
Findley then filed a false creditor's claim with the Superior Court of California in Los Angeles and a fake deed of trust with the Shelby County Register's Office in Memphis.
When the Presley family did not pay, Findley escalated. According to prosecutors, she offered to settle the claimed debt for $2.85 million, a reduction of $950,000 from the supposed original loan. When that offer was ignored, she published the foreclosure notice in The Commercial Appeal and announced the auction.
To pull this off, Findley juggled at least three fake identities. Federal prosecutors documented that she posed as Kurt Naussany (the supposed company owner), Gregory Naussany (another company representative), and Carolyn Williams (a fake lawyer). She used different email addresses, phone numbers, and post office boxes for each persona.
How It Was Stopped
Two days before the scheduled auction, Riley Keough filed a lawsuit in Shelby County Chancery Court alleging that the entire foreclosure was fraudulent. The 61-page complaint argued that Naussany Investments was not a real entity, that Lisa Marie Presley had never borrowed money from it, and that the documents were forgeries.
Shelby County Chancellor JoeDae Jenkins sided with Keough. He issued a temporary injunction blocking the sale, noting the notary's affidavit calling the signatures into question. No representative of Naussany Investments appeared in court to defend the claim.
Jenkins stated that the public interest was served by protecting Graceland, which he described as well loved by the community and indeed around the world. He also indicated that Keough would likely succeed in proving the fraud.
Elvis Presley Enterprises, the company managing the estate, issued a statement: there would be no foreclosure. Priscilla Presley, Elvis's ex-wife, posted on social media with a photo of Graceland and red text reading: "It's a scam!"
Naussany Investments dropped its foreclosure efforts. But what happened next added another twist.
The Nigerian Misdirection
After the foreclosure was blocked, someone emailing from the Naussany Investments email address contacted multiple news outlets, including CNN and NBC News, claiming responsibility for the scheme. The person identified themselves as a Nigerian identity thief named Gregory Naussany.
In emails to CNN, this person wrote that they routinely target the dead and elderly, especially in Florida and California. They admitted to using stolen identities and birth certificates to facilitate their schemes. The person appeared to speak with a kind of professional nonchalance about their criminal activity.
Reporters might have taken this at face value. But NBC News did not. Their investigative team followed the digital trail of the Naussany name, the email addresses, the phone and fax numbers, and the post office boxes used in court filings. The clues led not to Nigeria but to a small town in Missouri's Ozarks.
NBC News found more than half a dozen separate links connecting the Graceland scheme to Lisa Jeanine Findley, a woman with a documented history of financial fraud who had previously served time in both state and federal prisons. She had used multiple aliases throughout her criminal career, including Lisa Holden, Lisa Howell, and Lisa Jeanine Sullins.
When an NBC News reporter knocked on Findley's door in June 2024, she denied knowing anyone named Naussany and said she had no idea what the reporter was talking about.
The Arrest and Conviction
A federal grand jury in Memphis began hearing testimony on the case in August 2024. Witnesses included Rasheed Jeremy Carballo, a former acquaintance of Findley's who told NBC News she had shared details about a deal involving millions of dollars from a foreclosure connected to Lisa Marie Presley.
On August 16, 2024, federal agents arrested Findley at her home in Kimberling City. According to a person with knowledge of the arrest, at least 15 law enforcement officers were present to execute the warrant. She was charged with mail fraud and aggravated identity theft.
Findley initially pleaded not guilty. She remained in custody from the day of her arrest.
On February 25, 2025, Findley changed her plea. She pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud, acknowledging that the government's factual basis in the case was "true and accurate." As part of the plea deal, prosecutors dropped the aggravated identity theft charge.
On September 23, 2025, U.S. District Judge John Fowlkes sentenced Findley to 57 months in federal prison plus three years of supervised probation.
When asked if she had anything to say before sentencing, Findley declined to speak. The judge did not hold back. He called the scheme "brazen" and said the sentence was meant to impress upon Findley the seriousness of what she had done.
Her own defense attorney acknowledged the absurdity of the attempt, writing in a court filing that the scheme was "doomed from the start."
Prosecutors were less charitable. They argued that a substantial period of incarceration was necessary both to deter Findley from future criminal conduct and to protect the public.
What the Graceland Case Reveals About Property Fraud
The Graceland scheme failed because the target was one of the most famous properties in America. Riley Keough had the resources, legal representation, and public support to fight back immediately. A Shelby County chancellor intervened within days. The FBI and U.S. Postal Inspection Service launched a federal investigation. NBC News assigned an investigative team to trace the scammer's identity.
Most property owners do not have any of these advantages.
When a similar scheme targets a vacant lot, a rental property, or a home belonging to an elderly or deceased owner, the fraud often succeeds precisely because no one is watching closely enough to catch it in time. The FBI reported 9,359 real estate fraud complaints in 2024. The American Land Title Association's 2025 survey found that 62% of recently reported title fraud involved vacant land, and 46% of fraud attempts were only caught before closing, meaning that more than half were discovered after the transaction had already been completed.
The mechanics of the Graceland scheme are the same ones used against ordinary homeowners every day. Findley forged signatures, fabricated a company, created fake notarization documents, and filed them with a county register's office. The Shelby County Register's office had no filing from Naussany Investments related to Graceland in its records, which meant the scheme was caught before a fraudulent document was officially recorded. But in thousands of other cases across the country, forged deeds are successfully recorded because county clerks are required to accept any document that meets basic formatting and notarization requirements. They do not have the authority or the resources to investigate whether a deed is legitimate before recording it.
The Graceland case was ultimately stopped by a lawsuit. That is the same remedy available to any property owner who discovers a fraudulent filing on their title: a quiet title action. But for ordinary homeowners without the Presley family's legal resources, that process can cost thousands of dollars and take months or years to resolve.
How to Protect Your Property
The lesson from Graceland is not that the system worked. The system nearly failed, and it only succeeded because the target happened to be a nationally famous landmark with a well-funded legal team standing behind it.
For property owners without that level of protection, the practical takeaways are straightforward.
Register for your county's free property fraud alerts. Many county recorder offices, including Shelby County in Memphis, offer notification systems that alert you when documents are filed against your property. This is free and takes minutes to set up.
Monitor your property records regularly. Do not assume that because you own a property and have a clear title, nothing can change without your knowledge. Check your county recorder's website at least once a quarter to confirm no new filings have appeared.
Pay special attention to properties you do not actively occupy. Vacant land, rental properties, vacation homes, and inherited properties are the most common targets. If you own property in a different state, you need either a monitoring service or a reliable local contact who can check on it.
Consider proactive title protection. Monitoring services watch county records and alert you to changes. Some services go further. Title Barrier's Defense Plan, for example, records a legal declaration directly on your property's chain of title, creating a formal record that alerts title companies, lenders, and buyers that unauthorized transfers should not be processed. This does not make a fraudulent filing impossible, but it creates an additional barrier that a forger must overcome.
Know that title insurance may not cover post-purchase deed forgery. Standard owner's title insurance protects against defects that existed before you purchased the property. Post-purchase forgery, where someone forges a deed after you already own the home, has historically fallen outside that coverage. The American Land Title Association introduced new endorsements in August 2025 (ALTA 49 and 49.1) specifically addressing this gap. Ask your title company whether this endorsement is available for your policy.
Sources
- U.S. Department of Justice: Woman Pleads Guilty to Scheme to Defraud Elvis Presley's Family (February 2025) — justice.gov/opa/pr/woman-pleads-guilty-scheme-defraud-elvis-presleys-family
- U.S. Department of Justice: Woman Charged for Scheme to Defraud Elvis Presley's Family (August 2024) — justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/woman-charged-scheme-defraud-elvis-presleys-family
- ABC News: Woman convicted in Graceland fraud scheme sentenced to nearly 5 years in federal prison (September 2025) — abcnews.go.com/US/woman-convicted-graceland-fraud-scheme-sentenced-5-years/story?id=125855456
- NBC News: Missouri woman is sentenced in brazen and blundering attempt to steal Graceland (September 2025) — nbcnews.com/news/us-news/missouri-woman-sentenced-brazen-blundering-attempt-steal-graceland-rcna212741
- NBC News: Missouri woman charged in alleged scheme to steal Graceland (August 2024) — nbcnews.com/news/us-news/missouri-woman-charged-alleged-scheme-steal-graceland-extort-elvis-pre-rcna166915
- NPR: A judge blocks the foreclosure sale of Elvis' Graceland (May 2024) — npr.org/2024/05/21/1252665511/elvis-graceland-foreclosure-sale-lawsuit-riley-keough
- CNN: Graceland's self-described scammer takes credit for attempted foreclosure sale (May 2024) — cnn.com/2024/05/29/investing/graceland-scam
- FBI IC3 2024 Annual Report — ic3.gov/AnnualReport/Reports/2024_IC3Report.pdf
Disclosure: Title Barrier is a property protection service. This article covers a real case prosecuted by the U.S. Department of Justice. All facts are sourced from federal court documents, DOJ press releases, and reporting by ABC News, NBC News, NPR, and CNN.
Frequently Asked Questions
Did someone really try to steal Graceland?
Yes. In May 2024, a fraudulent company called Naussany Investments published a foreclosure notice in a Memphis newspaper announcing plans to auction Graceland on May 23, 2024. The scheme was orchestrated by Lisa Jeanine Findley, a Missouri woman who forged documents claiming Lisa Marie Presley had pledged Graceland as collateral for a $3.8 million loan. A Tennessee judge blocked the auction, and Findley was later arrested, convicted, and sentenced to 57 months in federal prison.
How did the Graceland fraud scheme work?
Findley created a fake lending company, forged loan documents with Lisa Marie Presley's signature and a Florida notary's forged signature, filed a false deed of trust with the Shelby County Register's Office, and attempted to force a foreclosure sale. She also filed a false creditor's claim in California. The scheme aimed to pressure Elvis Presley's family into paying a $2.85 million settlement to make the fake claim go away.
What happened to the woman who tried to steal Graceland?
Lisa Jeanine Findley pleaded guilty to mail fraud in February 2025 and was sentenced to 57 months in federal prison plus three years of supervised probation in September 2025. She had been in custody since her arrest in August 2024.
Could deed fraud happen to a regular homeowner?
Yes, and experts say it is more likely to happen to regular homeowners than to high-profile properties like Graceland. The FBI reported 9,359 real estate fraud complaints in 2024. Properties most at risk include vacant land, homes owned by the recently deceased, rental properties, and vacation homes. The same techniques used in the Graceland scheme, including forged deeds, fake notarizations, and fabricated company documents, are used against ordinary property owners.
How was the Graceland fraud stopped?
Riley Keough, Elvis Presley's granddaughter and the sole trustee of Graceland, filed a lawsuit alleging the foreclosure was fraudulent. Shelby County Chancellor JoeDae Jenkins issued a temporary injunction blocking the auction after finding that a Florida notary named on the documents submitted an affidavit stating she never met Lisa Marie Presley and never notarized anything for her.
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