In this True Crime episode of Mailin’ It!, hosts Karla and Jeff are joined by U.S. Postal Inspector Jan Bodón to unpack the plot to steal Graceland. Hear how investigators followed a bizarre trail of fake companies, forged notary stamps, and shredded documents to stop a fraudster from foreclosing on Elvis Presley’s iconic home. Additionally, listeners of this episode will learn crucial lessons on how to safeguard against deed fraud.
When a mysterious company filed a fraudulent foreclosure claim due to an alleged unpaid $3.8 million loan on Graceland, it sparked one of the most audacious real estate schemes in recent history. In this True Crime episode of Mailin’ It!, hosts Karla Kirby and Jeff Marino are joined by U.S. Postal Inspector Jan Bodón to uncover how the U.S. Postal Inspection Service foiled the plot to steal Elvis Presley’s iconic family home. Inspector Bodón takes listeners behind the scenes of the complex investigation, detailing how a trail of forged documents, digital breadcrumbs, and a burner phone led law enforcement from Tennessee to an overly ambitious fraudster in a small Missouri town. Tune in to this episode to hear the incredible twists that resulted in a nearly five-year federal sentence and gain insights on how to defend your home against deed fraud.
Karla Kirby:
Hello and welcome to Mailing It, the official podcast of the United States Postal Service. I'm Karla Kirby.
Jeff Marino:
I'm Jeff Marino. For this episode, we're digging into our latest true crime case from the files of the US Postal Inspection Service. And this one involves an audacious attempt to steal one of the most famous properties in America, a former home to rock and roll royalty. The property we're gonna be talking about is none other than 3765 Elvis Presley Boulevard in Memphis, Tennessee. You probably know it better as Graceland.
Karla Kirby:
It sounds like the plot of a heist movie. To guide us through this unbelievable story, we're joined by US Postal Inspector Jan Bodon, who is central to unraveling this case. Inspector Bodon, welcome to Mailin' It.
Jan Bodon:
Thank you. I'm very happy to be here. Well,
Jeff Marino:
Before we dive into the details of the Graceland case, could you give our listeners just a quick overview of what actually happened here?
Jan Bodon:
Yeah, absolutely. So in this case,the case began in May of 2024. We had local Memphis News, media and national media reporting that Graceland could potentially fall into foreclosure. Specifically the company, Naussany Investments and Private Lending was claiming that Lisa Marie Presley, who had passed away in 2023, had entered into a loan agreement with Naussany Investments for the amount of $3.8 million. Naussany investment is claiming or made the claim that Lisa Marie Presley defaulted on the loan and they had the rights now to foreclose on Graceland.
Jeff Marino:
Well, stealing Graceland is a pretty bold move. So how did Naussany Investments claim that they own the rights of the property? What were they gonna do with it?
Jan Bodon:
So what Naussany Investments did is they created the foreclosure paperwork and then they had to by, by law, mail it and give notice to Promenade Trust, who is the entity that governs Graceland. So they mailed the foreclosure notice to the Superior Court of California where it was filed, and they also mailed it to Riley Keough, Elvis Presley's granddaughter, who also is part of Promenade Trust and notified them that Graceland was going to be foreclosed on by Naussany Investments. Once they received the notice, once Riley Keough and her attorneys received notice, they filed for an injunction against the foreclosure process immediately, and the injunction was granted.
Jeff Marino:
Okay, so a federal investigation actually got started about this. How did this wind up in an inspection service case?
Jan Bodon:
I've been a member of the Postal inspection services DOJ mail fraud team for many years. And over the years I had worked with trial attorney Christopher Fenton. I should point out that once the injunction was granted in Memphis Naussany Investments just walked away from the foreclosure process. So I thought that was strange. Christopher Fenton also thought it was strange, and he stopped by my office and said, you want to look into this case with me a little further? He and I had already worked together when I was a member of the Postal Inspection Services, DOJ mail fraud team. We have created the DOJ mail fraud team has created a stellar reputation on being able to efficiently and thoroughly investigate our cases and lead to numerous successful prosecutions in complex white collar crime cases. So we had that relationship there already. I absolutely said yes, and, and we started looking into it because we both thought it was very strange that a company who made a claim of losing $3.8 million once a court granted an injunction, no attorney, no representative of the company went to court to argue why they did in fact have rights to Graceland. They just walked away.
Jeff Marino:
So some red flags there from the beginning, huh?
Jan Bodon:
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Jeff Marino:
You've got a company that seems like it's fake. You've probably got some forged documents, but that doesn't seem like a lot to go on. Where does an investigation start, like, go?
Jan Bodon:
You're, you're correct. We, we had the creditors' claim, and so we asked the attorneys for Promenade trust if they would be willing to send us the documents that they had received from Naussany Investments. So it, it appeared that the individual responsible for this fraud was trying to use Graceland's fame to lend credibility and legitimacy to their foreclosure claim. This ended up backfiring because Promenade Trust their attorneys filed for the injunction, Naussany Investments backed away. It made us suspicious as the federal government. And so we decided to start investigating. We were able to get the fraudulent creditors claim, and that provided us with a ton of leads. It provided me with PO Box addresses, telephone numbers, emails, and names like Carolyn Williams and Kurt Naussany. And so when I started an investigation, I'd like to envision a, a funnel. I start out with a wide, a large potential leads, number of leads, a large evidence and I start gathering evidence and start looking at all the leads that I'm getting. And slowly as I gather evidence and I organize the evidence, I'm gonna get to the narrow end of that funnel and be able to see who's responsible for this crime that I'm investigating.
Jeff Marino:
Are there any particular tools you've got to narrow this funnel?
Jan Bodon:
Yes. I relied on Postal Service databases as well as law enforcement databases to do background checks on Naussany Investments, Kurt Naussany, and pretty quickly I was able to find out that even though they had a digital footprint, they really did not exist in the physical world. I was also then able to focus on the PO box and the PO Box application associated with that PO box address that I have found in the creditor's claim In there, I was able to identify additional information that helped me move the investigation forward.
Karla Kirby:
So just outta curiosity, where was the PO box located?
Jan Bodon:
So the PO Box was in a small town that I was absolutely not familiar with until this investigation. It's named Kimberling City in Missouri.
Karla Kirby:
So that is a really long way from Memphis. How did you connect those dots and start to identify an actual suspect?
Jan Bodon:
What I ended up doing after reviewing the application was trying to match information on the PO box application with information in that I had already found in the creditor's claim. The fraudster in this case, they could get away with creating the name Kurt Naussany or the name Naussany Investments, but when you're renting a PO Box, you have to use real information. And so I was able to rely on that real information and confirm telephone numbers, match email addresses that I had seen before. And then I also picked up a new name Lisa Finley, as well as matching some names that were authorized to receive mail at that PO box such as Carolyn Williams and Kurt Naussany. We also had I found the name that I did not recognize, but I was able to track it down to a roommate that Ms. Finley had in the past. We tracked him down to Chicago and then I went to interview him in Chicago.
Jeff Marino:
What did he say about the situation?
Jan Bodon:
He was able to corroborate quite a lot of the information that we already had. He was also able to tell us that he noticed Ms. Finley was very mysterious and careful who she would let in a room where she kept all her tablets, phone phones and those, that type of information or, or products, electronics. And so he also, that was helpful for us during the, the search warrant to have that information. He also told us that when he was walking by in the kitchen, he noticed some prescription bottles. And when I asked him if he remembered the names on the prescription bottles, he said, yeah, some of them were Lisa Finley, but others were Lisa Holden. That got me to go back to law enforcement databases looking for information on this new name that I had. And pretty quickly I was able to realize that Lisa Holden, Lisa Finley were the same person.
Jeff Marino:
So that's pretty incredible. This suspect created a really big web of people and identities and, but she seems to have left you a pretty clear trail of breadcrumbs to follow. How did you close in on her?
Jan Bodon:
Once I had all this information, telephone numbers, email addresses, PO box addresses, I was now able to send out subpoenas to internet service providers to find out who actually created the account for these emails, who was in control of them. I also was able to send subpoenas out to telecommunication companies to find out who was in control of that phone number or phone numbers that I had uncovered during the investigation. When you create an email, you have to provide a recovery email and you have to provide other data points that have to be real. And when we got the subpoena productions back, that's what we were able to identify that the same data points that I had found in the PO box application were also the same data points that I was seeing in the telecommunications subpoena productions as well as the internet service provider subpoena productions.
Jeff Marino:
I also understand you found out the documents were forged as well?
Jan Bodon:
Yes, I contacted the notary public based on the stamp that was provided in the, the documents and she was in Florida, she was able to confirm that she had never met Lisa Marie Presley, that she had no part in the notarizing of the documents that were sent to Promenade Trust and that her stamp was used without her knowledge. She did not know how the stamp was used 'cause she had it in her possession, but it was not her. And, and she had never met Ms. Presley and had not participated in the notarizing of that document.
Jeff Marino:
Interesting. It sounds like all the signs were pointing back to Lisa Findley.
Karla Kirby:
So, you know, you, you spoke with the notary. I understand that the media was also involved. Can you, can you let us know how that impacts this type of investigation?
Jan Bodon:
Yes fortunately, I I spoke of a investigative funnel earlier. At this point, It had narrowed down to where I could see that Lisa Lisa Janine Finley was the person responsible for this crime based on the PO box information, the email accounts and witness interviews among other evidence that I had gathered. I say luckily because I understand the national media, they're trying to get to the bottom of the story, but when they go out and they interview the potential suspect and they put it out into the ether, the suspects usually will be aware of it and they'll start to cover their tracks. A lot of the times our federal investigations are conducted covertly for several reasons, but mainly so that the suspects are unaware that we are onto them and they don't try to start to destroy evidence in order to cover their tracks. So it was, it was a little bit of a challenge at that point, and we had to amp up the speed of our investigation so that we could collect evidence and arrest our suspect without the suspect fleeing and without the suspect destroying the evidence.
Karla Kirby:
So I understand in some instances suspects may also try and deflect blame to other folks. Was that an issue with this case,
Jan Bodon:
This suspect Ms. Finley got very creative there. She actually sent emails pretending that a Nigerian fraud group was create, was responsible for this entire scheme, this entire mail fraud scheme. That actually backfired on her because when we executed the search warrant, we found phones. And in those phones when the forensic analysis was done, we found some of those emails that she had sent out trying to get us to not be on track anymore and, and get us off her path.
Jeff Marino:
So it sounds like the press attention kind of gave her a heads up that you guys were starting to close in and that's when she started try and cover her tracks.
Jan Bodon:
That's correct. She did that. There were reports that federal grand jury had been convened to investigate the crime as well, and all of this started to spook her and she tried to, she made different efforts in order to try and cover her tracks or, or get off, get us off her scent and think of maybe another potential suspect.
Jeff Marino:
But you guys weren't swayed and eventually you wound up arresting her. So you've built this case and now it's time to confront her, the person who launched this attempt to steal Graceland. What happened then?
Jan Bodon:
Well, we were able to obtain an arrest warrant for Lisa Janine Finley, and we were able to obtain a search warrant for the trailer that she lived in in Kimberling City, Missouri. I knew as the supervisor for the DOJ mail fraud team that we were gonna need additional bodies to execute the arrest and the search warrant, and I asked for assistance and the inspectors from the Springfield, Missouri domicile did a spectacular job helping us out with both the arrest and the search warrant.
Jeff Marino:
What did you find in the trailer?
Jan Bodon:
In her trailer, when we first knocked she pretended that she didn't know why we were there. She was arrested and she went to the, well, she was taken to the marshals In the trailer itself. We found tons of evidence. We were able to find handwritten notes with information on Graceland. We were able to find a computer tablet that was actually open to the federal court docket for the Graceland investigation. We also found shredded documents in a waste basket, and we collected the waste basket the, the shredding in the waste basket and submitted it to our forensics lab. I I've got give them some type of gift as a thank you, because as you can imagine, putting together shredded documents is not easy. But they did. And they went through the painstaking effort of doing that, and it actually helped us in the investigation to show that in fact, Ms. Finley was the person that we were looking for.
Jeff Marino:
And then even after she was arrested, apparently she still continued to incriminate herself.
Jan Bodon:
She did. It's not uncommon for me to once someone's arrested to start listening to their jail calls, even though they get a recorded message, letting them know that the phone call is being recorded, usually they will say something that actually incriminates them even further. And in this case, Ms. Finley was talking to a girlfriend and asking her to go into her bedroom. She apparently had a large 80 pound bag of cat food and she had stuffed a phone halfway down that bag of cat food. So in the recorded phone call, I'm listening to her give her friend directions on where this cat, this bag of cat food is and how far down she has to go to get the phone. And then providing her instructions on what she needs to delete from that phone.
Karla Kirby:
Well, she just kept digging a hole for herself. So she was charged with mail fraud and aggravated identity theft. What was the final outcome?
Jan Bodon:
She maintained her innocence initially. In those recorded phone calls, I also heard her sister, who actually had federal criminal history tell her, look, if the federal agents postal inspectors or any other federal agent arrests you, usually it's because they have gathered all the evidence by now. And so she eventually decided to plead guilty to the one count of mail fraud. Her sentence was 57 months and three years of supervised release. Some of the listeners may think that the sentence is not harsh considering she tried to to steal a national treasure. But I want to remind the listeners that she was sentenced to nearly five years in prison for the attempt to commit mail fraud. She did not make a dollar but her actions earned her significant time in federal prison.
Jeff Marino:
That certainly is a powerful lesson to learn. So great story. But before we let you go, this case touches on a fear that a lot of people have fraud. Specifically someone trying to steal the title to your home - deed fraud. And we actually came across this in our last True Crimes episode. Is there any advice you can give to our listeners to help protect themselves from this type of crime?
Jan Bodon:
Yes. This is a burgeoning crime, and currently there is no statewide freeze, similar to a credit freeze, but you could get an alert at the county level, it's called a Property Alert system, and you can set that up for your property through your county recorder or your registrar or deed's office. The Property Alert System is gonna notify you immediately if a document is filed against your property.
Karla Kirby:
Well, that's good information to know.
Jeff Marino:
What about just your own instincts? If something, we, we often talk to the inspectors and they often say something like, it just feels wrong. Is that a good sense that something might be going on that's that's not above board?
Jan Bodon:
We, we absolutely tell both our postal customers, number one, to avoid being a victim. If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is likely, right? Mm-Hmm <affirmative>. And it's similar to in this type of crime - deed crime, if you get a mailing that you don't recognize that doesn't make sense, that's making some sort of it's alluding to some financial transaction involving your deed or your home and you don't remember this, you, you did not participate in it. Absolutely. Don't just throw it in the trash. Make sure you reach out to your county recorder or their registrar of deeds, go to the, the county office and try and find out what's going on.
Karla Kirby:
That's a good point because typically if you get like a phishing email and you call that sender, you end up giving all of your information to that person. So that's great advice. You're, you're saying to go to the county, like the record of deeds, not necessarily respond to who sent the inquiry.
Jan Bodon:
Correct. That's, it's inconvenient. It's a trip an errand that you weren't planning on. It may take you a little bit of time. You may have to be in line waiting but it's definitely worth your time if you're gonna protect your property and, and your home that you've worked so hard to own.
Jeff Marino:
Yeah. Home is usually one of your biggest investments and certainly something you wanna pay attention to.
Karla Kirby:
Exactly.
Jeff Marino:
Well, thank you so much Inspector Bodon for coming in and chatting about this. This is a crazy story. Somebody actually trying to steal Graceland.
Jan Bodon:
It was my pleasure. Hopefully the listeners got educated and at the same time entertained on this the way the investigation unfolded and we identified the suspect and and held the suspect accountable.
Karla Kirby:
You say Merl to the story, the attempt can get you five years.
Jeff Marino:
Indeed.
Karla Kirby:
All right, Jeff, it is time now for another edition of did you know. What's on the agenda for today?
Jeff Marino:
Well Karla, the Postal Service currently employs over 620,000 people. And in the years since its creation, that number has easily been in the millions, but not everyone who starts in the Postal Service stays there. And some have become quite notable in other lines of work.
Karla Kirby:
So I remember a few episodes ago we did talk about Abraham Lincoln and how he was the postmaster of New Salem, Illinois.
Jeff Marino:
That's right. He's probably the most famous example. But today I wanna talk about another big one, Conrad Hilton
Karla Kirby:
As in Hilton Hotels.
Jeff Marino:
Yep. He was born in 1887 in San Antonio, New Mexico. And from 1910 to 1911, he served as the postmaster of that town. He was just 23 years old at the time and earned about $600. This was still a year before New Mexico obtained full statehood. And after that, he attended Goss Military Academy, served in New Mexico's first state legislature and became a lieutenant in the US Army during World War I.
Karla Kirby:
And he did all of this before going into the hotel business.
Jeff Marino:
Hard to believe. But yes, he bought his first hotel in 1919 in Cisco, Texas, then expanded Hilton operations into Dallas, El Paso and Albuquerque. And eventually, as you know, across the entire country. After World War II, it grew internationally becoming the juggernaut it is today with over 9,000 hotels in 146 countries. Conrad's son Baron sold the empire to the Blackstone Group in 2007 for $26 billion, which means the Hiltons are no longer connected to the business other than their name. And so, while his name is now synonymous with hotels, we know Conrad Hilton's journey to worldwide fame had a humble beginning serving his community at his local post office.
Karla Kirby:
Well, that was definitely interesting.
New Speaker:
So just the audacity, that's what comes to mind when I think about you're gonna try and steal Graceland.
Jeff Marino:
It's pretty fascinating what people will do for money <laugh>
Karla Kirby:
And then not be successful with it.
Jeff Marino:
Yeah. It's, it's a common thread with these inspection service true crime series that it's pretty clear that they're leaving lots of breadcrumbs that the inspectors can follow and eventually get their person.
Karla Kirby:
Absolutely. And I think one of the great things to take away from this particular episode was just like you mentioned, that deed stealing that's happening right now and how people need to be vigilant looking in the mail. And then of course, like the inspector mentioned, go to the recorder of deeds. Do not reach out to who sent you the notice.
Jeff Marino:
Good advice.
Karla Kirby:
Absolutely. And that's all for this episode of Mailin' It. Don't forget to subscribe to mailing it wherever you get your podcast. To make sure you don't miss the next episode and follow along on Instagram @USPostal Service, X @usps, Facebook and youtube.com/@usps.