There was allegedly only one person behind the cartoonish scheme to steal Graceland

As any cartoon thief with a striped shirt and sack full of money knows, all good plots have to start with a simple, “I’m going to steal ___.” Consider Gru’s scheme to steal the moon in the original Despicable Me and of course, Nicolas Cage’s to steal the Declaration of Independence in National Treasure. Now, we can add Lisa Jeanine Findley’s insane plot to steal Graceland from the Presley family, a scheme apparently hatched following the death of Lisa Marie Presley last year.

If you missed the original news, this past May, the Presleys’ claim to the Graceland estate, which has been in their family for over half a century, looked to be in potential jeopardy. According to court filings that lawyers for Elvis’ granddaughter, Riley Keough, called “fraudulent” at the time, a company called Naussany Investments & Private Lending LLC claimed that Elvis’ daughter, Lisa Marie, had put the estate up as collateral for a $3.8 million loan she took out before her death in 2023. Unsurprisingly, this outrageous statement was swiftly deferred by a judge to allow time for “adequate discovery” to take place.

Now it has, and what it found should be more than adequate for any screenwriter or documentarian hoping to be the first one to find their next big thing. This morning, according to Variety, authorities arrested a 53-year-old woman named Lisa Jeanine Findley on suspicion of being the entirety of Naussany Investments. In classic villain fashion, the outlet notes that she’s also gone by the names of Lisa Holden, Lisa Howell, Gregory Naussany, Kurt Naussany, Lisa Jeanine Sullins, and Carolyn Williams. She’s scheduled to make her first court appearance later today.

According to prosecutors, Findley apparently posed as three separate people employed by the entirely fake lending firm, falsified collateral documents, forged the signatures of Lisa Marie Presley and a Florida state notary named Kimberly Philbrick (who swore under oath that she had never met Lisa Marie nor notarized any documents for her), and then filed a false creditor’s claim with the Superior Court of California. She then allegedly published a fake foreclosure notice in a local paper advertising that her fake company would be auctioning off the estate to the highest bidder on May 23. This is what tipped the Presley family off to the scheme, which Findley apparently responded to by trying to pin the whole thing on a Nigerian identity thief. 

The alleged fraudster has now been charged with mail fraud and aggravated identity theft. If convicted, she faces a minimum of two years in prison for identity theft, and a maximum of 20 years for mail fraud. Meanwhile, Graceland will stay safe and sound with the Presley family, where it has always been. Don’t you just love it when a movie writes itself?