Los Angeles (USA), Aug 16 (EFE).- A woman was arrested on Friday accused of plotting a multimillion-dollar scam and stealing the Elvis Presley family’s stake in Graceland, the late singer’s legendary mansion in Memphis (USA).
“The defendant orchestrated a scheme to effect a fraudulent sale of Graceland by falsely claiming that Elvis Presley’s daughter (Lisa Marie Presley) had pledged the landmark as collateral for a loan that he defaulted on prior to his death,” Nicole M. Argentieri, principal assistant attorney general for the U.S. Department of Justice’s Criminal Division, said in a statement.
The complaint alleges that the 53-year-old defendant, who faces federal charges, “created numerous false documents and attempted to extort the Presley family into a settlement,” Argentieri added.
The defendant allegedly posed as three different people for a fictitious private lender and falsely claimed that Presley’s daughter borrowed $3.8 million in 2018 from her company, put up the Graceland home as collateral and never repaid the debt, the U.S. Justice Department said.
To settle the case, he asked the family for $2.85 million and “allegedly fabricated loan documents on which he forged the signatures of Elvis Presley’s daughter and a Florida notary public,” and published a fraudulent foreclosure notice in a Memphis newspaper announcing that he planned to auction Graceland to the highest bidder last May, the filing said.
This auction was actually halted by a Tennessee judge who ruled that it would irreparably harm Elvis’s granddaughter, Danielle Riley Keough, who had previously filed a lawsuit to block the sale.
Keough took over ownership of the house, now a popular tourist attraction in the rock-and-roll king’s hometown, after the death of his mother, Lisa Marie Presley, last year.
Lisa Marie Presley was the sole heir to Graceland and her father’s estate when he died in August 1977.
Graceland, which has reached a value of hundreds of millions of dollars, has become one of the biggest tourist attractions in the southern United States and for years was the second most visited house in the country after the White House. EFE
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