Graceland Con Artist Appears to be Missouri Grandma, Not Nigerian Scammers
Remember when “Nigerian scammers” tried to steal Graceland?
Well we’ve got a story for you. It led us to a scammer grandma with a decades-long rap sheet and me to the door of a trailer in Branson for answers. https://t.co/KUIX49ifbo
- Brandy Zadrozny (@BrandyZadrozny) June 14, 2024
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NBC News has done some incredible investigative reporting into the attempt to auction off Graceland. Instead of the Nigerian scammers that allegedly took credit, the culprit seems to be...a grandma from Missouri.
• The forged loan documents and legal filings in the Graceland foreclosure case contained a number of clues that led not to a gang of scammers in West Africa, but to a city five hours northwest of Graceland, and to a Branson, Missouri grandmother named Lisa Holden with multiple aliases who has for decades scammed people and companies for hundreds of thousands of dollars and served time in federal prison.
• Near the end of last summer, Kurt Naussany, an executive for Naussany Investments & Private Lending LLC, began emailing the estate of Lisa Marie Presley to demand payment on a $3.8 million loan she had supposedly taken out in 2018, putting up Graceland as collateral. The documents used as evidence of the debt, which included Presley’s signature and a notary’s, had been forged, according to the estate’s lawyers.
• However, Kurt Naussany did not exist. And Naussany, as a name, also did not seem to exist. There was no record of it in any of the numerous public records databases used by NBC News, nor in business or court filings. In September, a Kurt Naussany claiming to be “a Law Enforcement Investigator” left a negative Google review at a Tulsa, Oklahoma, car dealership.
• A new Facebook profile was created for “Carloyn Naussany,” an apparent misspelling of “Carolyn,” described as a self-employed entrepreneur in Branson. The account would be used as a weapon in a battle between a local nail salon and a disgruntled former employee whom Lisa had befriended.
• “Carloyn Naussany” left numerous negative reviews for NV Nails and included personal insults and accusations about the owners, threats of legal action and tales of dissatisfaction. Along with the seemingly fake reviews, the salon began receiving texts from someone claiming to be “Carolyn,” a Missouri state investigator who didn’t give a last name. In the texts, Carolyn threatened legal action on behalf of a former salon employee, Rasheed Jeremy Carballo.
• The salon’s owners sought orders of protection against Carballo last September. They claimed he was behind a bizarre harassment campaign that included spamming their business with negative fake reviews and constant texts and emails from the “investigator” named Carolyn.
• Salon owner Karen Virtudazo wrote in her court filings she was “continually sent emails, texts, phone calls posing as law enforcement, attorneys, the Missouri attorney general, Secretary of state investigator and the U.S. Marshall.” She wrote that one attorney, who she later learned to be fake, said she was being sued for $1 million and asked for her Social Security number to protect her. Virtudazo gave it. She soon began receiving credit alerts showing that someone was applying for loans in her name.
• A recent immigrant from Belize, Carballo had found work doing nails in the salon. It would be a brief gig and an acrimonious split with the owners. One of his earliest friends was a woman named Lisa. In phone interviews with NBC News, Carballo said Lisa told him that an inheritance had made her rich and that she was getting into the weed dispensary business. Lisa offered him a room in her home, and after the falling out with the salon owners, the promise of support.
In court filings and in an interview with NBC News, Carballo insisted he wasn’t a part of any harassment.
“She was terrorizing these people,” Carballo said of Lisa’s constant emails, texts and reviews.
• Lisa, who had also been a customer of the salon, reached out to Virtudazo in September, according to an email obtained by NBC News. Sent from Lisa’s email address, it forwarded an email sharing details of an impending lawsuit and investigation into the nail salon on behalf of a Las Vegas mother from a Google review. The forwarded letter included a PDF of a consumer complaint lodged with the Missouri attorney general and was signed by Carolyn Williams, of Jefferson City, Missouri’s “Investigations Dept,” which does not exist.
Carolyn Williams was also the name of the representative who filed the claim in January on behalf of Naussany Investments in the scheme to force the sale of Graceland.
• In January, Carballo filed a request to dismiss Virtudazo’s protective order case. The filing lists his address as P.O. Box 514, Kimberling City, MO, an address Carballo said Lisa provided.
The same month, Carolyn Williams, representing Naussany Investments, filed a creditor’s claim against Lisa Marie Presley’s estate in Los Angeles County, listing Naussany’s address as the same place: P.O. Box 514 in Kimberling City.
• In February, Carballo submitted a handwritten letter to the court in the protection order case. The letter was sent via fax from 1-877-361-0412; Carballo said Lisa faxed it on his behalf. In May, someone calling himself Gregory E. Nassauny used the same number to fax a motion in Shelby County Chancery Court in Tennessee seeking to prevent the Presley estate from stopping the foreclosure sale of Graceland.
• The texts sent to the salon owners from Carolyn, who claimed to be a Missouri state investigator, came from 727-268-7074, the same number listed on documents in September attached to the fraudulent creditor’s claim for Presley’s loan in Los Angeles County court. In that filing, the Naussany company included a copy of an email in which Kurt Naussany seeks records from U.S. Bank. His email signature includes the 7074 number.
• Naussany’s other listed address, P.O. Box 1015 in Hollister, Missouri, is associated with the name and email address Lisa is currently using, according to public records databases.
• Early in 2024, Lisa talked with Carballo about a foreclosure deal and Lisa Marie Presley’s house and how she and a California lawyer were going to get a couple of million dollars, he said. After being interviewed by NBC News, Carballo said he went to the FBI with what he knew.
• “Do you remember when the movie came out, ‘Catch Me If You Can’?” Lisa’s ex-husband Steven Sullins asked last week in a phone interview with NBC News, recalling the 2002 Leonardo DiCaprio film about a professional forger and conman. “That’s her. That’s what she does.”
• Lisa Holden was born in California and has claimed to be: a nursing assistant (Oklahoma State Department of Health records do include a 1992 long-term-care aide certification for a Lisa Sullins), an EMT, a doctor, a hairdresser and an underwater welder.
• Lisa’s first reported brush with the law was in 1997, when she was 26 in Sapulpa, Oklahoma, for writing a bogus check. For the next 20 years Lisa would be in and out of jails, courts and prisons, charged with various crimes, including stealing checks and credit cards, committing fraud, running con games, intimidating witnesses and obstructing investigations. In 2005, she was hit with federal charges. Prosecutors claimed she used fake Social Security numbers to obtain more than $180,000 in loans from Tulsa banks. Lisa pleaded guilty to one count of making a false statement in an application for a loan and was sentenced to 20 months and restitution. By 2009 Lisa was on supervised parole, but couldn’t stop committing crimes, according to her parole officer, who asked a judge to consider putting her back in prison.
• After spending much of 2010 and 2011 imprisoned in Oklahoma, Lisa was released. Over the next three years, she moved 11 times, mostly following a trail of lovers whom she met on internet dating sites and repeatedly scammed. A judge threw her back in jail.
• Lisa’s sister Linda is also a con artist whose schemes were far more sophisticated.
According to the government’s case, from around 2006, Linda had been luring victims into investing in a fake hedge fund called RGM Enterprises LLC with promises of 40% returns. (One victim said he was later told by authorities it stood for “Really Great Money.”) The company came with a Las Vegas phone number and a fancy Las Vegas office address but in reality, was being run through a post office box. Promotional materials boasted a large staff, including a Cornell-educated chief operating officer, Joshua Nichols. After the FBI failed to find any record of him, the U.S. magistrate judge in the case wrote, “it is questionable whether Joshua Nichols is an actual person.”
Eventually the FBI got involved after millions of dollars were stolen. Linda pleaded guilty to wire fraud and tax fraud and was sentenced to 45 months in prison and three years of supervised release.
• Lisa and Linda started living together again last year. While there are echoes of Linda’s fake investment company’s Ponzi scheme in the Graceland scam, no evidence ties her to it.
• Last summer, Lisa’s son said she traded in her car and bought him a truck from South Pointe Chrysler Jeep Dodge Ram in Tulsa. Shortly afterward, "Kurt Naussany" left a review for the same dealership alleging that the business accepted trade-in cars that had been stolen.
• NBC News located Lisa and knocked on her door. Lisa said she didn’t have a P.O. Box, and didn’t know any Naussany. She said her IDs had been stolen last year and that she had filed a report with the county. (Representatives for Taney County and Stone County were unable to locate such a record.) She said that she would be taking the list of Naussany connections to the sheriff that day to file a complaint of identity theft.
After leaving Lisa’s porch, the reporter followed up in a text with details of each Naussany connection. When asked whether she had filed a report with the sheriff, Lisa responded with a cease and desist letter, demanding the reporter end all communication. Within half an hour of the reporter’s visit, the Carloyn Naussany Facebook account had been deleted.
• The FBI has declined to comment on an active investigation.
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