It’s going to be a case of Jailhouse Rock for a Missouri woman has been sentenced to more than four years in federal prison for scheming to defraud Elvis Presley’s family by trying to auction off his Graceland home and property before a judge halted the brazen foreclosure sale.
Now a museum, the Memphis attraction welcomes about 650,000 visitors a year and is listed in the U.S. National Register of Historic Places – the first site recognized for significance related to rock music.
U.S. District Judge John T. Fowlkes Jr. sentenced Lisa Jeanine Findley in federal court in Memphis on Tuesday to four years and nine months behind bars, plus an additional three years of probation.
Findley, 54, pleaded guilty in February to a charge of mail fraud related to the scheme. She also had been indicted on a charge of aggravated identity theft, but that charge was dropped as part of a plea agreement.
Findley falsely claimed Presley’s daughter borrowed $3.8 million from a bogus private lender and had pledged Graceland as collateral for the loan before her death in January 2023, prosecutors said when Findley was charged in August 2024. She then threatened to sell Graceland to the highest bidder if Presley’s family didn’t pay a $2.85 million settlement, according to authorities.
Findley posed as three different people allegedly involved with the fake lender, fabricated loan documents and published a fraudulent foreclosure notice in a Memphis newspaper announcing the auction of Graceland in May 2024, prosecutors said. A judge stopped the sale after Presley’s granddaughter sued.
Experts were baffled by the attempt to sell off one of the most storied pieces of real estate in the country using names, emails and documents that were quickly suspected to be phony.
Fowlkes, the judge, said it would have been a “travesty of justice” if the sale had been completed.
“This was a highly sophisticated scheme to defraud,” he said.
Graceland opened as a museum and tourist attraction in 1982. A large Presley-themed entertainment complex across the street from the museum is owned by Elvis Presley Enterprises. Presley died in August 1977 at the age of 42.
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