A Missouri woman was sentenced on Tuesday to more than four years in federal prison for scheming to defraud Elvis Presley’s family by trying to auction off his Graceland home and property before a judge halted the brazen foreclosure sale.

US district judge John T Fowlkes Jr 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 $3.8m 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 $2.85m 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 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. Presley died in August 1977 at the age of 42.

The public notice for the foreclosure sale of the 13-acre (5-hectare) estate said Promenade Trust, which controls the Graceland museum, owed $3.8m after failing to repay a 2018 loan. Actor Riley Keough, Presley’s granddaughter, inherited the trust and ownership of the home after the death of her mother, Lisa Marie Presley.

Keough filed a lawsuit claiming fraud, and a judge halted the proposed auction with an injunction. Naussany Investments and Private Lending – the bogus lender authorities say Findley created – said Lisa Marie Presley had used Graceland as collateral for the loan, according to the foreclosure sale notice. Keough’s lawsuit alleged that Naussany presented fraudulent documents regarding the loan in September 2023 and that Lisa Marie Presley never borrowed money from Naussany.

Kimberly Philbrick, the notary whose name is listed on Naussany’s documents, indicated she never met Lisa Marie Presley nor notarized any documents for her, according to the estate’s lawsuit. The judge said the notary’s affidavit brought into question the authenticity of the signature.

In halting the foreclosure sale, the judge said Elvis Presley’s estate could be successful in arguing that a company’s attempt to auction Graceland was fraudulent.

A statement emailed to the Associated Press after the judge stopped the sale said Naussany would not proceed with the sale because a key document in the case and the loan were recorded and obtained in a different state, meaning “legal action would have to be filed in multiple states”. The statement, sent from an email address for Naussany listed in court documents, did not specify the other state.

After the scheme fell apart, Findley, who has a criminal history that includes attempts at passing bad checks, tried to make it look like the person responsible was a Nigerian identity thief, prosecutors said. An email sent on 25 May 2024, to the AP from the same email as the earlier statement said in Spanish that the foreclosure sale attempt was made by a Nigerian fraud ring that targets old and dead people in the US and uses the internet to steal money.

In arguing for a three-year sentence, defense attorney Tyrone Paylor noted that Presley’s estate did not suffer any loss of money and countered the prosecution’s stance that the scheme was executed in a sophisticated manner.

Fowlkes, the judge, said it would have been a “travesty of justice” if the sale had been completed.

“This was a highly sophisticated scheme to defraud,” he said.