The woman who tried to secretly (and illegally) sell Graceland is going to jail.

There are all sorts of real estate scams out there, including title and identity theft. But this one will go down in history as one of the most audacious of all time.

Graceland, Elvis Presley’s Memphis 13-acre estate, is world famous. Millions of people have visited since he died in 1977 and is a genuine national historic site. But several years ago, a Missouri woman completely unconnected to Elvis and his family tried to take control of Graceland and sell it. Let’s try to unpack this.

Lisa Jeanine Findley claimed that in 2018, Lisa Marie Presley (Elvis’ daughter) borrowed US$3.8 million from Naussany Investments and Private Lending–a private lender that did not exist–and put up Graceland as collateral. Using three fake identities, Findley created the fake lender, made up loan documents, and when the fake loan wasn’t repaid, published a fake foreclosure notice in a Memphis newspaper in May 2024 in which she threatened to sell Graceland to the highest bidder if Presley’s family didn’t pay her (or those fake companies) for US$2.5 million. By this time, Lisa Marie had been dead for more than a year.

When the foreclosure notice appeared, it immediately roused suspicions. Sell off one of America’s most iconic houses for less than three million bucks?

Enter Riley Keough, the actor, Lisa Marie’s daughter, and Elvis’ granddaughter. She inherited the rust and ownership of Graceland after her mother died. She filed a lawsuit claiming all kinds of fraud. A judge agreed that something stunk and halted the foreclosure auction.

All the documents were exposed as fake and all of Lisa Marie Presley’s signatures were forged. The scheme quickly fell apart.

Findley sounds like a real piece of work. She has a criminal history over the passing of bad cheques and–I love this–tried to make it look like it was one of these Nigerian identify theft scammers. A fake email was discovered (written in Spanish) that the attempt at foreclosure was made by some kind of Nigerian organization that likes to prey on old and dead people. In fact, though, it was Findley.

Graceland remains safe. Findley has been sent to prison for four years and nine months plus another three years of probation.