A Missouri woman was sentenced Tuesday to more than four years in prison in a brazen and blundering attempt to steal Graceland from the family of Elvis Presley.
Lisa Jeanine Findley, 54, who has gone by many other names in a criminal career spattered with financial grifts, was accused of posing as a bogus investor claiming rights to the historic landmark that draws more than half a million visitors a year. Presley lived at the Memphis estate until he suffered a fatal heart attack in 1977.
The 57-month prison term, plus three years of probation, imposed by a federal judge in Memphis marked the final notes of a madcap plot born two years ago in a small city in Missouri’s Ozark Mountains. Findley declined to speak on her own behalf during the hearing.
Lisa Findley on her porch.Micah McCoy for NBC News
Posing as someone named Kurt Naussany, an executive for a company that did not exist, Findley in July 2023 began emailing lawyers for Presley’s granddaughter, actor Riley Keough, who’d become the sole trustee and owner of Graceland following the death of her mother, Lisa Marie Presley, investigators said.
Findley, pretending to be Naussany, demanded payment on a $3.8 million loan she said