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Southwest Twin Puts on Community Days

Southwest Twin’s first community day of the season (Photo: Courtesy DCA)

Established in 1956, the Southwest Twin Drive-In was Memphis’ second-ever drive-in. Back then, it was called the 61 Drive-In until Malco Theatres purchased it in 1965, adding a second screen and growing its capacity to 600 cars. It closed in 2001, and after a brief stint as a flea market, the property sat unused and vacant until 2022 when the city of Memphis and Shelby County each committed $1 million to reactivate and revitalize the site.

“It all started with a big push from community members for the city to do something with the site,” says Ashley Cash, director of Housing and Community Development for the city. “It’s been blighted for decades, so there’s been a lot of discussion around what should happen there.”

The plan, so far, is to establish a library and police precinct on the site, but with 20 or so acres of property and two screens, its uses could extend far beyond just those two facilities. “It’s a community anchor,” Cash says. “And so our whole strategy around anchors is to come in, invest in the anchor, to encourage the private market to either reinvest or invest around it and really support and stabilize neighborhood.”

Still during the planning phase, with construction not set to start until the beginning of next year, Cash says, “we also wanted to make sure that [the site] remained a vibrant community space, and community members could see themselves there. They can still have opportunities to provide input and they can ask someone for additional information.”

That means programming that engages neighbors before everything is even rebuilt. Last quarter, Southwest Twin focused on cleanups, rehabbing and reinvesting in the site. In the coming weeks, it’ll be host to a series of community days with a focus on “setting roots” — pun intended, as the days are gardening-centric, with workshops provided by Everbloom Farmacy.

In addition to activities, games, and giveaways, attendees will be able to pot seedling starters at each community day. Saturday, August 10th, kicked off the programming season with 1,368 seeds sowed; Southwest Twin partners have a goal to hit 3,000. 

At the next community day on August 24th — titled Grow Basics for Gardening at Home — attendees can listen to an overview of basic garden considerations and watch a demo of grow methods. Plus, Memphis City Beautiful will hold a free mulch and compost giveaway, where folks can fill their own bucket or container to bring home and garden or compost themselves. There will also be chess, basketball, arts and crafts, trivia and games, and music and movement led by musician Ekpe Abioto and instructors Ayanna Campbell and Kaila Matthews throughout the morning. Youth of Westwood, which gives food to the Westwood community twice a week, will provide food.

Upcoming community days include Planting Your Fall Garden on September 7th, Managing Your Garden & Your Health on September 21st, Harvesting & Eating From Your Garden on October 5th, and the Community Harvest Celebration & Festival on October 19th. More information on these events can be found at southwesttwin.com. 

Grow Basics for Gardening at Home, Southwest Twin, 4233 South 3rd St., Saturday, August 24, 9-11 a.m., free.

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Music Music Features

Amber Rae Dunn Is Giving It Her All

Amber Rae Dunn with The Royal Blues Band at “A Tribute to the King” (Photos: Michael Donahue)

If you heard Amber Rae Dunn sing for the first time at the recent “A Tribute to the King,” you might want to know more about her.

The captivating singer filled the stage of Lafayette’s Music Room with her voice and personality at the event held August 11th, featuring headliner Ronnie McDowell as well as The Royal Blues Band with Wyly Bigger on keyboards.

“I am from Schererville, Arkansas,” Dunn says. “I grew up with six siblings and my dad was just a barber and my mom was a stay-at-home mom who took care of all of us. There was not a lot to do, but we had a three-acre garden. Just about every memory of my life, I have it in the garden. My favorite animal is a turtle, and I loved that I got to collect worms off tomato plants to feed to my turtle.”

Dunn also sang. “All the time. Everywhere around the house. I was definitely the loudest kid my parents have.”

Dunn with Leon Griffin

If she wasn’t singing “This Little Light of Mine” in church, Dunn was listening to her mother’s Al Green, Michael Jackson, and Prince albums and her dad’s ’90s country music. “So, I’m sure I was singing those songs as well.”

Like she still does, Dunn worked at her dad’s barbershop, Larry’s Hair Design, in West Memphis, Arkansas. She learned how to cut and style hair when she was in high school. “Other kids go to soccer practice or others take acting. I enrolled in hair school.”

She began singing on stage while attending Memphis College of Art for a degree in sculpture. Yubu Kazungu, a fellow student, invited her to join him at an open mic. She asked Kazungu, who heads Yubu and the Africans, why he thought she could sing. She says he told her, “I can hear you humming in the sculpture room working on a pot. You hum on key, and I feel like you can sing on key.”

Dunn joined Kazungu’s band and appeared with the group at open mics around town.

Kazungu “had been pestering” her to write a song, so Dunn came up with “Arkansas Line.” After some persuading from Kazungu one night at a soul food restaurant, Dunn sang the song in front of an audience while keeping the beat by snapping her fingers.

People at the show told her she was really good, but that she needed to go to Nashville because “that’s not really the type of music we have in Memphis.”

So Dunn got a job at Wayne’s Unisex, a Nashville barbershop. She went to clubs at night to “work tips for the band.” She did whatever she could, whether it was “do handstands” or “pinch cheeks,” to get customers to put money in the tip jars. “Then, finally, at the end of the night when everyone was good and drunk and half the people were gone, they would let me get up and sing two or three songs at 3 in the morning.”

Dunn was realistic about living in Nashville. “My plan was five years. If nothing happened, I was like, ‘Okay, I guess this isn’t the path I’m supposed to get on.’”

But nine months after she got to Nashville, one of her brothers was killed in a motorcycle accident, so she returned home to comfort her parents. “I’m a sucker for family.”

Starting at an open mic at Earnestine & Hazel’s, Dunn thought, “I need to meet people. If you build it, they’ll come.”

Mark Parsell stopped in one night and invited Dunn to check out his venue, South Main Sounds. Singing at one of Parsell’s Friday night shows, Dunn met Andrew Cabigao, who helped her get a job as social media representative at Mark Goodman’s MGP The Studio. While there, Dunn recorded her first album, Arkansas Line. Attending a songwriters workshop at Visible Music College, Dunn met Billy Smiley, founding member of White Heart, a Dove Award-nominated Christian rock group. He invited her to come to Nashville and maybe do an album at his studio, Sound Kitchen Studios.

She was two songs into the album when Covid hit. She released a couple of singles, but the album, I Guess That’s Life, wasn’t released until March 2023.

One of those songs, her popular “Barbershop,” is “just kind of talking about my dad’s barbershop and the type of customers we have. It’s just nostalgic.”

She also began going to workshops in and outside of Memphis in addition to bartending on Friday nights at South Main Sounds and performing with her band, Amber Rae Dunn and the Mulberries.

Dunn is thinking about a new album, but it might go in another direction. “Vocally, there’s a lot of soul and blues to my voice. But there’s also a lot of country. So, I don’t know. I feel like there’s a way to navigate the two.”

She’d like to mix “a Memphis sound” with her “traditional country sound.” 

When she’s not cutting records or cutting hair, Dunn, who is married to Justin Craven, is performing with her band around town. She’s also a guest host with Leon Griffin on Memphis Sounds on WYPL. 

Not forgetting her visual art chops, Dunn, who recently got into mosaics, currently is working on a mural at the Super 8 motel in West Memphis.

But Dunn is primarily sticking with songwriting, which she decided at 25 was going to be her journey. She told herself, “I don’t know what the outcome is, but I’m going to give it my all.” 

See Amber Rae Dunn live at Momma’s, 855 Kentucky Street, Wednesday, August 28th, 7 p.m., with Mario Monterosso.

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At Large Opinion

Commie!

Mikhail Gorbachev in 1992 (Photo: Konstantin Gushcha | Dreamstime)

Look, comrades, I grew up at a time in this country when the thing we kids were taught to fear more than anything else in our little Midwestern lives was COMMUNISM! 

Communist Russia — the USSR — was the big, scary enemy, a country led by authoritarian leaders like Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev, who were attempting to take over the world and destroy democracy and the American way of life. They were the commies, the pinkos, the red menace — a nuclear-armed adversary who was also our rival in space, with their cursed Sputnik satellites. The Russians were so bold they even propped up Fidel Castro in a communist state 90 miles away from Miami. Russia, we were told by our teachers and parents, was determined to force everyone in the world to live in a commune and toil under communism, a fate presumably worse than death. 

In our schools, we had two kinds of drills: fire drills, in which at the sound of a long bell, every student high-tailed it “single file” down the stairs and out the doors onto the schoolyard lawn, goose-assing and laughing all the way. (If you were lucky, you attended a school that had one of those cool fire-escape slides out a third-story window, which livened up the process.) But the real serious stuff took place during the air-raid drills, where, at the sound of a keening siren, we had to “duck and cover” under our desks, which, as everyone knows, will protect you against nuclear holocaust. Mainly, of course, it just scared the crap out of us and traumatized a couple generations.

This went on through the 1980s, at which point, President Reagan had turned standing up to Russia into performance art (“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”). It turned out to be a surprisingly effective gambit, or at the worst, Reagan’s timing was spot-on. The Soviet Union’s economy was collapsing during the 1980s, leading to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and lending a measure of stature to Reagan’s latter years in office.

If there was one benefit of this strange, decades-long international game of Russian roulette, it was the fact that we were actually taught what communism is. We learned most of Karl Marx’s greatest one-liners, including the scariest one: “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs,” which we Americans were taught to see as the mantra of a system that destroyed ambition and the drive to succeed that American capitalism was built upon. I think that’s simplistic, but it’s also mostly true. Living on the dole is living on the dole. All communism does is narrow economic opportunity to oligarchs. Everyone else? Pass the beans and borscht and keep your head down, comrade.

The fact is that communism has proven to be a horrible system of government, one that concentrates power under an authoritarian rule, censors books and newspapers, offers only rudimentary education for the poor, discriminates on the basis of gender and race, and controls healthcare. In communist countries, posters of the authoritarian Dear Leader are plastered on every open space. Flags with his image are flown in every public square. 

That’s why it seems so absurd to me to hear MAGA types — and Donald Trump himself — call Kamala Harris and Democrats “communists.” It sounds like you’re being tough when you call someone a communist, but they literally appear to have no idea what a communist is. 

Think of the two major American political parties: When it comes to a cult of personality, one that features posters of Dear Leader, flags, religious iconography, clothes, and even tattoos, which party comes to mind? Which party has come out in support of banning books? Which party wants to give public tax dollars to private schools? Which party openly demonizes LGBTQ Americans and people of color? Which party wants to centralize power and give it to an authoritarian who will “be a dictator on day one”? Which party wants to control the healthcare decisions of the country’s females? Which party literally rejected democracy in 2020? 

If your answer to those questions is anything other than the Republican Party, you’ve gone down into a scary rabbit hole, a place where the light of the obvious won’t penetrate. It’s like you’re in a permanent duck-and-cover drill. 

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Music Music Blog

Isaac Hayes Estate Sues Trump Campaign

Isaac Hayes (Photo: Courtesy Stax Museum of American Soul Music)

The musical choices of Donald Trump’s handlers run the gamut these days, as the aging felon grasps at any cultural reference that will make him seem “hip.”

And the music is often counterintuitive — who could have foreseen that the venomously anti-LGBTQ candidate would pump up his rallies to the tune of “Y.M.C.A.” by the Village People? Or that the campaign would provide it’s own elegy with the wildly unlikely “My Heart Will Go On,” Celine Dion’s tearjerker from…Titanic? As the AP’s Maria Sherman reported recently, Dion’s social media team immediately responded that “In no way is this use authorized, and Celine Dion does not endorse this or any similar use,” then added, “…And really, THAT song?”

Sherman goes on to detail a whole stack of such artists who, like Dion, were blindsided by the use of their music at rallies for Trump as early as 2020, including Bruce Springsteen, Rihanna, Phil Collins, Pharrell, John Fogerty, Neil Young, Eddy Grant, Panic! at the Disco, R.E.M., Guns N’ Roses, and the Rolling Stones.

You can also add some Stax to the stack.

On March 5th, the X account for Isaac Hayes Enterprises posted, “The estate and family of Isaac Hayes DID NOT approve the use of ‘Hold on I’m coming’ written by Isaac Hayes and David Porter by Donald Trump tonight at his Super Tuesday rally. We and our partners at @primarywave will be taking steps to stop the unauthorized use of this song.”

It seems they were ignored. This month they upped the ante when, on August 10th, Isaac Hayes III, son of the Stax artist, posted:

The next day, the X account representing Isaac Hayes Enterprises posted the following:

This August 20th, on what would have been the 82nd birthday of “Black Moses,” the Memphis Flyer is happy to report that even from beyond, Hayes continues to be a baaaad mother…but I’m talking ’bout Isaac! Meanwhile, what of the song’s co-writer, David Porter, now CEO of Made in Memphis Entertainment? Sherman’s article also hints at what Porter thinks of Trump, noting that in 2022, after learning that Trump used “Hold On, I’m Coming” at an NRA rally, he tweeted “Hell to the NO!”

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News News Blog News Feature

First Look: Tennessee’s New Driver’s License Design

Credit: Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security

Tennessee driver’s licenses have a new look, new security features, and new self-service kiosks that may mean shorter times to get them. 

The Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security (TDOSHS) started issuing the new licenses Monday. The colorful new cards feature a stylized version of Tennessee’s historic State Capitol Building and state flag. However, the driver’s photo is in black and white. 

The new design features an inlay of tight, wavy lines meant to make it hard for them to be photo-scanned or easily reproduced. They also feature a new printing method that overlaps data, graphics, and laser-engraved elements that will show if a license has been altered or is fake. 

The back of the card has a barcode, which contains all of the driver’s information. The back also includes a mini “ghost image” repeated from the photograph to help reduce identity theft. 

Credit: Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security

Many of the new elements make them more difficult to “counterfeit, alter, or duplicate,” said TDOSHS Commissioner Jeff Long. All in all, the measures “help prevent theft and fraud and help keep your identity safe.”

All current licenses are valid until their expiration dates. So, drivers do not need to rush out to get a license with the new design. 

New kiosks at many Driver Service Centers across the state will allow drivers to self-serve a host of transactions. At the kiosks, drivers can renew or replace a license or ID card, change their address, update emergency contact information, advance a teen/graduate driver’s license, pay reinstatement fees, and request a license reissue. The new kiosks can take photos and process payments with Apple Pay, Google Pay, and credit and debit cards.  

For more information, click here. 

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News News Blog News Feature

MATA’s Trolley Suspension Sheds Light on Potential Agency Cuts

Photo Credit: Memphis Area Transit Authority

The Memphis Area Transit Authority (MATA) has decided to suspend trolley service as they prepare to finalize their budget. This decision sheds light on potential service and employment cuts as the agency works to scale back spending in hopes of providing its board with a balanced budget.

Officials announced on Sunday that they discovered a trolley brake issue which resulted in a “costly” recommendation from the Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT). The agency opted to temporarily suspend the service rather than “making that spend right now.”

As a result, 18 employees have been laid off. The maintenance team remains in place, as MATA said they hope to bring the trolley back.

“The balance is very delicate,” said Bacarra Mauldin, MATA interim CEO. “While we want a system of choice and transportation options, for now, we must focus on the needs of riders who rely on public transportation to get to work, doctor appointments, school, and other critical destinations.”

Downtown riders have the option of using Groove On Demand services as service is halted.

This decision comes as the agency is preparing to submit their final budget to the board of commissioners for approval. In May, officials revealed the agency was facing a $60 million deficit.

As reported earlier, Mauldin said the agency’s debt has been growing due to the increased cost of doing business, decreased ridership, and flat funding.

“If we were to keep operating the way we’re operating today, our budget would be $85 million,” Mauldin said. “We have committed to our board that we were going to present a balanced budget. We presented a draft budget of $67 million for FY25.”

Mauldin said they have not been able to identify funding for their current operating system, which has caused them to make their proposed cuts. According to MATA, they will also be streamlining staffing and vendor costs, as they prepare to submit the final budget for approval.

During today’s Memphis City Council committee meeting, Mauldin said they have based their budget on doing things in a “completely different way,” causing them to examine different routes, expenses, and headcount as “everything is on the table.”

MATA said they are looking to have their budget approved on August 27th and to send notices to affected employees on August 28th. They said this is set to affect more than 200 employees.

“Every affected employee will be notified in the coming weeks and receive support securing alternate employment,” MATA said in a statement. “In addition, vendor contracts have been discontinued and/or dramatically scaled back.”

Council member Rhonda Logan remarked that the deficit has been an issue for a while, however the public has only become aware recently.

“I think it’s very important that the community understands the fact that it’s not like the MATA system is spiraling right now — this has been going on for a very long time,” Logan said. “Unfortunately we have not known, as a council, that you all were in that shape.”

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News News Blog Sports Tiger Blue

Liza Wellford Fletcher Stadium to Rise at U of M

The University of Memphis has announced plans to build a new stadium for its soccer and track-and-field teams. Liza Wellford Fletcher Stadium will be named in honor of the St. Mary’s Episcopal School teacher who was abducted and murdered while on an early-morning run in September 2022. A 2006 graduate of Hutchison School, Fletcher played soccer for two seasons at the U of M and was a member of the 2007 team that won the first of 14 conference championships for the program under coach Brooks Monaghan.

“Our student-athletes deserve a place that reflects their accomplishments,” said U of M athletic director Ed Scott during a press conference Tuesday on the South Campus, where the new stadium will rise. “The importance [of this stadium] goes way beyond the bricks and mortar. It will honor the legacy of Liza Fletcher. I didn’t get the chance to meet Liza, but I’ve heard wonderful things about her. As a girl dad, there’s a special place in my heart when we can honor a young woman.”

The first phase of the stadium project will include the construction of a grandstand, press box, and locker rooms at an estimated cost of $7 million. Having played for many years at the Mike Rose Soccer Complex and more recently on the South Campus (with temporary bleachers), Tiger soccer will gain its first on-campus facility, a “home” as Monaghan emphasized during his remarks.

“I’ve had the opportunity to work with some remarkable young ladies,” said Monaghan, “and Liza was undoubtedly one of them. Liza was not the most gifted soccer player, but her dedication, her spirit, her work rate, and her smile were unmatched. She was a leader, a friend, and a true beacon of light for anyone who knew her. I can’t help but feel this is the perfect way to honor her legacy.”

A construction timeline was not announced but when asked about goals for completion of the new stadium Monaghan emphasized, “as soon as possible.”

For more information on the stadium project, visit lizaslight.org.

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Film Features Film/TV

Music Video Monday: “Lavender” by Isabella&Sebastian

Today, we have a brand-new artist on Music Video Monday. Isabella&Sebastian are not who you’re probably thinking of. They’re the indie pop duo of Isabella deFir and Sebastian Stephens, two Memphis teenagers with a surprisingly mature sound. “Lavender” is their latest single recorded, at Young Avenue Sound.

“‘Lavender’ is a complex song that describes an enthralling young woman who uses her femininity to get what she wants,” says deFir. “Many have tried to break down her walls, and all have failed and been left brokenhearted. As dreamy as she seems, upon closer inspection of the lyrics, one may notice she is subtly falling apart, her flakey and unstable lifestyle being a defense mechanism to protect herself from whatever she may be hiding from. But one can’t help but fall in love with her, including the narrator of the story.”

The video by Landon Moore takes the duo inside the legendary Paula Raiford’s Disco Downtown. All I’ll say is, this video’s got a lot of disco balls.

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News News Blog News Feature

MATA CEO Discusses State of Transit, Budget, and Proposed Changes

Baccarra Mauldin (Photo: Memphis Area Transit Authority)

The Memphis Area Transit Authority (MATA) has gone through significant change over the past few months, prompting questions from concerned citizens and bus riders alike.

Bacarra Mauldin was named interim CEO following the retirement of former CEO Gary Rosenfeld in February. Mauldin’s appointment followed the aftermath of the agency opting to nix their controversial proposed winter service changes.

Since those proposed changes that were presented as a way to enhance the agency’s on-time performance and efficiency, other problems have arisen, such as a $60 million deficit that was announced in May.

Mauldin said the agency is going through a “transformation” dedicated to serving Memphis and their entire service area in the best way possible.

Having worked in transit prior to arriving at MATA, Mauldin said she would call the current state of affairs “business unusual.”

“I say that as a play on ‘business as usual’ because so many transit agencies across the country are going through the same thing — at various levels and proportions,” Mauldin said. “They’re all going through their ‘isms’ when it comes to budget, and funding, and finance.”

Ridership has plummeted as a result of Covid-19, playing a major factor in the state of transit, Mauldin said. Agencies are also in the aftermath of Covid-19 relief funds running out.

“That really propelled the state of financial instability for transit agencies across the country, large and small,” Mauldin said.

Mauldin said the agency’s debt has been growing due to the increased cost of doing business, decreased ridership, and flat funding. She added that their budget holds have resulted in slower on-time performance.

One of the first things Mauldin did in her official capacity was to retain the services of external CFO Hamish Davidson of J.S. Held LLC. Mauldin said up until this point, there had not been a CFO at the agency, and they needed someone to get in immediately to recreate those financials so they could “move forward with certainty.”

“Knowing good business, and what good business structure and practices look like, I made the decision early on that I needed a reputable, credible CFO to come in and rebuild the finances because the finances hadn’t been reported in quite some time,” Mauldin said. “In fact the financial reports didn’t even exist.”

In addition to this, Mauldin said the agency immediately put “cost-saving measures” into effect. MATA hopes to bring the CFO position in-house “in time.”

“The cost-saving measures will probably be a permanent thing,” Mauldin said. “We are stewards of taxpayer’s money, and we want to make sure we are always using those in the best way, and operating in transparency and good faith.”

As a result of acting in transparency, the agency has made both employees and riders aware of some of the potential changes that could take place in order to improve efficiency, performance, and the budget.

“If we were to keep operating the way we’re operating today, our budget would be $85 million,” Mauldin said. “We have committed to our board that we were going to present a balanced budget. We presented a draft budget of $67 million for FY25.”

These cuts have impacted routes, staffing, and other factors, Mauldin said. While she said these changes “hurt,” the agency has to have a “solid, sustainable foundation” to thrive.

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News News Blog News Feature Uncategorized

Arrest Made in ‘Brazen’ Fraud Scheme on Graceland, Presley Family

Graceland Mansion (Photo: Shara Clark)

Suspicious minds at the U.S. Attorney’s Office found a Missouri woman was a devil in disguise for a fraud scheme against Elvis Presley’s family that may now have her singing “Jailhouse Rock.”

Lisa Jeanine Findley (also known as Lisa Holden, Lisa Howell, Gregory Naussany, Kurt Naussany, Lisa Jeanine Sullins, and Carolyn Williams), 53, was arrested Friday morning for an attempt to steal the Presley family’s ownership in Graceland. The woman will appear later today in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri.

“As alleged in the complaint, the defendant orchestrated a scheme to conduct a fraudulent sale of Graceland, falsely claiming that Elvis Presley’s daughter had pledged the historic landmark as collateral for a loan that she failed to repay before her death,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Nicole M. Argentieri, head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. “As part of the brazen scheme, we allege that the defendant created numerous false documents and sought to extort a settlement from the Presley family. Now she is facing federal charges. The Criminal Division and its partners are committed to holding fraudsters to account.”

According to court documents, Findley allegedly posed as three different individuals affiliated with a fictitious private lender named Naussany Investments & Private Lending LLC. Findley allegedly claimed falsely that Lisa Marie Presley had borrowed $3.8 million in 2018 from Naussany Investments, pledged Graceland as collateral for the loan, and failed to repay the debt. 

To settle the purported claim, Findley allegedly sought $2.8 million from Elvis Presley’s family. She allegedly fabricated loan documents on which Findley forged the signatures of Elvis Presley’s daughter and a Florida State notary public. 

She then allegedly filed a false creditor’s claim with the Superior Court of California in Los Angeles, and a fake deed of trust with the Shelby County Register’s Office in Memphis. Findley also allegedly published a fraudulent foreclosure notice in The Commercial Appeal, announcing that Naussany Investments planned to auction Graceland to the highest bidder on May 23rd. 

Finally, when Naussany Investments was sued by Presley’s family in Tennessee state court as part of an effort to stop the sale of Graceland, Findley allegedly submitted false court filings.

After the scheme attracted global media attention, Findley allegedly wrote to representatives of Presley’s family, the Tennessee state court, and the media to claim falsely that the person responsible for the scheme was an identity thief located in Nigeria.

“As a Memphian, I know that Graceland is a national treasure,” said Kevin G. Ritz, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Tennessee. “This defendant allegedly used a brazen scheme to try to defraud the Presley family of their interest in this singularly important landmark. 

“Of course, all homeowners deserve to have their property protected from fraud, and the Department of Justice will vigorously prosecute anyone who commits financial crimes or identity theft.”

Findley is charged with mail fraud and aggravated identity theft. If convicted, she faces a mandatory minimum of two years in prison for aggravated identity theft and a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison for mail fraud.

“Fame and money are magnets for criminals who look to capitalize on another person’s celebrity status,” said Inspector in Charge Eric Shen of U.S. Postal Inspection Service (USPIS) Criminal Investigations Group. “In this case, Ms. Findley allegedly took advantage of the very public and tragic occurrences in the Presley family as an opportunity to prey on the name and financial status of the heirs to the Graceland estate, attempting to steal what rightfully belongs to the Presley family for her personal gain. 

“Postal inspectors and their law enforcement partners put an end to her alleged scheme, protecting the Presley family from continued harm and stress. This is an example of our relentless investigative work and commitment to bringing criminals to justice for their illegal activity.”