A Missouri woman who tried to sell Elvis Presley's home located in Tennessee was sentenced this week.
Lisa Jeanine Findley used a fake company and forged documents to sell off Elvis Presley’s Graceland for millions of dollars in a brazen and unrealistic foreclosure sale of the home-turned-museum was sentenced on Tuesday to more than four years in federal prison.
U.S. District Judge John T. Fowlkes Jr. questioned the likelihood of the plot’s success when he sentenced Lisa Jeanine Findley in federal court in Memphis to four years and nine months behind bars, plus an additional three years of probation. Findley, 54, declined to speak on her own behalf during the hearing.
Findley 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, of Kimberling City, 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.
Graceland served as Presley’s home in Memphis before he died in August 1977 at the age of 42. It opened as a museum and tourist attraction in 1982 and draws hundreds of thousands of visitors each year. A large Presley-themed entertainment complex across the street from the museum is owned by Elvis Presley Enterprises.