Lisa Findley took a plea deal, which dropped a count of aggravated identity theft
A Missouri woman has agreed to plea guilty to a federal charge of mail fraud related to a scheme to defraud Elvis Presley‘s family by attempting to auction off Graceland. Her plea deal, filed Tuesday, dropped a count of aggravated identity theft.
The woman, Lisa Findley, had been accused by the U.S. Department of Justice of orchestrating “an alleged scheme to defraud Elvis Presley’s family of millions of dollars and steal the family’s ownership interest in Graceland.” Her plea deal was entered in the United States District Court for the Western District of Tennessee.
While the mail fraud count carries a maximum sentence of 20 years, prosecutors said they’d recommend a sentence of less than five years, according to The New York Times.
Presley’s granddaughter, Riley Keough, inherited the Graceland estate after a battle with her grandmother, Priscilla. Keough alerted a judge in May to Findley’s plot, claiming that Findley’s Naussany Investments and Private Lending LLC had placed a lien on the estate under the pretense that the late Lisa Marie Presley (Keough’s mother) had used it as collateral for a $3.8 million loan.
A rep for Graceland and Riley Keough did not immediately respond to Rolling Stone‘s request for comment.
“As part of the brazen scheme, we allege that the defendant created numerous false documents and sought to extort a settlement from the Presley family,” Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Nicole M. Argentieri, head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, previously said in a statement. “Now she is facing federal charges. The Criminal Division and its partners are committed to holding fraudsters to account.”
