The legal drama behind the attempted foreclosure of Graceland, Elvis Presley's iconic Memphis mansion, has taken a bizarre twist that could have come straight out of a mystery crime novel.
A new in-depth investigation by NBC News has revealed that the mastermind behind the scam is allegedly a woman named Lisa Holden, a grandmother/con woman who lives in Branson, Missouri.
Holden, who's gone by multiple other names, has a "decades-long rap sheet of romance scams, forged checks and bank fraud totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars, for which she did time in state and federal prison," according to the report. Her ex-husband compared her to Leonardo DiCaprio's con artist character in 2002's "Catch Me If You Can."
As for how Holden ties into the Graceland saga, it started back in May when a Missouri company called Naussany Investments and Private Lending claimed it was going to put Graceland on the auction block. The company alleged that Lisa Marie Presley signed a Deed of Trust in 2018 to secure a $3.8 million loan and used Graceland as collateral. It went on to claim that Lisa Marie didn't pay the money back before she died in 2023, so it was forcing a foreclosure sale as repayment.
Riley Keough, Lisa Marie's daughter, quickly filed a lawsuit to stop the potential sale, claiming that her mother never borrowed any money from the company and that Naussany Investments was a false entity that used bogus documents and forgeries of Lisa Marie's signatures. At a court hearing for the matter, no one representing Naussany Investments showed up and the sale of Graceland was blocked.
News outlets, including NBC and The New York Times, then received an email from someone claiming to be Gregory Naussany, saying he was part of a Nigerian identity theft ring and even though the Graceland scam was a failure, they would never stop preying on people, according to the report.
Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti launched an investigation, saying he wanted to find out why investors threatened one of America's most iconic landmarks.
NBC News also went to work, trying to unravel the mystery behind Naussany Investments. The investigation poured through numerous public records databases along with business and court filings, and found no record of the name Naussany. But while they "may not have existed in the real world, they lived online," in the form of internet profiles used to leave negative reviews on local businesses.
One such profile, a Facebook account under the name "Carloyn Naussany," launched a harassment campaign against a nail salon and threatened legal action on behalf of a former employee, Rasheed Jeremy Carballo, NBC reported. It got to the point where the salon owners obtained orders of protection against Carballo. Legal documents in the case list his address as "P.O. Box 514, Kimberling City, MO" -- which is the same address used by Naussany Investments in its court filings, per the report.
Carballo told NBC News that a woman he knew only as "Lisa" was behind the harassment and that she even provided him a room in her home for a few months after he lost his job at the salon.
NBC also found other connections to the Graceland scam and in early June, it tracked down Lisa Holden at a trailer park in Branson. "Lisa came out to the porch and for 13 minutes answered questions about the connections between her and Naussany," the report said, but she denied everything and said she had "no earthly idea" what the reporter was talking about. She must be a victim of identity theft, she claimed, per the report.
Less than 30 minutes after the reporter left Holden's home, the Carloyn Naussany Facebook account had been deleted, according to the report. A reporter tried to follow up with Holden, but she "responded with a cease and desist letter, demanding the reporter end all communication," NBC said.
A spokesperson for the Tennessee Attorney General's Office told Rolling Stone in a statement that it "looked into the Graceland matter, and it quickly became apparent that this was a matter best suited for federal law enforcement."
"We have faith in our federal partners and know they will handle this appropriately," the statement added.
An spokesperson for the FBI told reporters that the agency does not comment on investigations or even the likelihood that they exist.