BRANSON, Mo. — The brand the mysterious firm within the support of a draw to rob Elvis Presley’s Graceland estate led final week to a limited, indifferent city attain the Ozark Mountains and the gnome-lined porch of a trailer, nestled alongside one branch of a winding lake.
The path there became as soon as correct as circuitous, stretching in the end of a protracted time and insist traces, traced through cyber net profiles, felony backgrounds, household histories, factual records and weak memories.
It started with a brazen location that made global headlines in Also can just: Naussany Investments, a firm that didn’t seem to exist, skedaddle by of us that didn’t seem to exist, had filed a scream seeking retain watch over of Graceland over what they alleged became as soon as an unpaid debt. Naussany Investments said Lisa Marie Presley, Elvis’ simplest petite one, owed them hundreds of hundreds of bucks in unpaid loans when she died a year earlier, and after failing to get from the estate, the firm would power the foreclosure sale of the ancient Memphis, Tennessee, mansion as compensation.
The paperwork filed to toughen Naussany Investments’ case had been clearly forged, and within days of the foreclosure sale being halted by a think, the scammers admitted their location.
After posing as “Kurt Naussany,” “Gregory Naussany” and “Carolyn Williams,” executives for the fictional Naussany Investments firm, the scammers wrote to NBC Data and other outlets that they had been dropping the charade. Emails from a particular person calling himself Gregory Naussany said he became as soon as fragment of a hoop of Nigerian identity thieves and boasted that even with the Graceland failure they would retain preying on of us with out fear of capture. “We soundless down and snigger at you idiots and witness you assemble fools of yourselves,” be taught the email, written in clunky Spanish. “Come secure us in Nigeria.”
That confession looked to be the final act in a factual drama that became as soon as now a topic for the authorities, including the attorney well-liked of Tennessee, whose draw of job announced it became as soon as investigating Naussany Investments.
But it completely became as soon as no longer the top of the parable. The forged mortgage paperwork and factual filings within the foreclosure case contained a preference of clues that led no longer to a gang of scammers in West Africa, however to a city 5 hours northwest of Graceland, the achieve a convoluted dispute playing out on Facebook and in native courts bore beautiful connections to the Naussany case.
Micah McCoy for NBC Data
These connections ended in a grandmother in Branson, Missouri, a con lady with a decadeslong rap sheet of romance scams, forged checks and financial institution fraud totaling plenty of of hundreds of bucks, for which she did time in insist and federal penal advanced.
She goes by Lisa Holden this show day, however pale chums, household and victims know her by other final names, including Howell, Findley and Sullins. NBC Data chanced on Lisa through Facebook and Google, the achieve she gave the influence to use the name Naussany to put up detrimental opinions for folk and companies she didn’t esteem, and sure opinions for these she did. Greater than half a dozen hyperlinks gave the influence to individually connect Lisa with the foiled try at Graceland, including cellular phone and fax numbers, put up draw of job containers and spurious personas.
These that know Lisa know her as various of us: a woman made properly off from inheritance, a cannabis entrepreneur, an underwater welder, a net harasser, a most cancers faker, and a scammer. One thing they seem to agree on: She’s sure.
“Oh, she does no longer stop,” said Paula O’Dell, who knew Lisa as a flight medic and efficiently sued her in 2007 for the return of $6,000 Lisa had borrowed beneath unsuitable pretenses. As a reporter became as soon as leaving a message on her answering machine, O’Dell picked up.
“When I heard that name, I believed ‘Oh, no,’” O’Dell said. “What’s she done now?”
Attain the top of ultimate summer, Kurt Naussany, an govt for Naussany Investments & Interior most Lending LLC, started emailing the estate of Lisa Marie Presley to demand charge on a $3.8 million mortgage she had supposedly taken out in 2018, striking up Graceland as collateral.
The paperwork well-liked as evidence of the debt, which included Presley’s signature and a notary’s, had been forged, according to the estate’s lawyers, who filed a factual complaint against Naussany Investments and Kurt Naussany to discontinue Graceland’s foreclosure sale, which had been scheduled for Also can just 23.
What became rapidly obvious: Kurt Naussany didn’t exist. And Naussany, as a reputation, also didn’t seem to exist. There became as soon as no myth of it in any of the reasonably just a few public records databases well-liked by NBC Data, nor in industrial or court filings. The sole other name associated with the tried sale of Graceland became as soon as too well-liked to trace down: Carolyn Williams, listed as Naussany’s “senior sequence officer” within the solid mortgage paperwork.
But while Kurt and Carolyn might well possibly additionally no longer like existed within the actual world, they lived online.
In September, a Kurt Naussany claiming to be “a Legislation Enforcement Investigator” left a detrimental Google review at a Tulsa, Oklahoma, vehicle dealership, warning others to “BEWARE OF THERE FRAUD!!”
And a sleek Facebook profile became as soon as created for “Carloyn Naussany,” an apparent misspelling of “Carolyn,” described as a self-employed entrepreneur in Branson. The myth would be well-liked as a weapon in a battle between a native nail salon and a disgruntled pale employee whom Lisa had befriended.
The myth’s first put up became as soon as a detrimental review of the nail salon within town’s dirty laundry Facebook personnel, Branson Buzz: “This ought to soundless uncover you ample about NV NAILS BRANSON LANDING. A shame a younger lady had to lose fingertips because of carelessness. Surprise if the salon is facing a lawsuit.?!” Carloyn Naussany’s review of NV Nails included screenshots of a review from a mother in Las Vegas alleging her daughter’s fingertips needed to be surgically eradicated due to the the nail cropping she got on commute in Branson. Screenshots of alternative opinions posted to Google came from names including “WelderGirl” and “None Ya.”
Extra unsuitable Google and Facebook opinions for the salon followed beneath various names, few of which seemed tied to real of us. The opinions had been plagued by misspellings and well-liked a the same form of nonstandard grammar, capitalization and punctuation. They included deepest insults and accusations relating to the house owners, threats of factual motion and tales of dissatisfaction.
The house owners of NV Nails had been chums. They had sold the industrial much less than a year sooner than from the longtime owner, who became as soon as seeking to retire. And as offbeat as Branson might well possibly additionally be — it’s known for its Elvis tribute artists and extended-preserve hotels, esteem Vegas, however for Christians — they couldn’t like guessed what they had been in for.
Along with the reputedly spurious opinions, they started receiving texts from any individual claiming to be “Carolyn,” a Missouri insist investigator who didn’t give a final name. In the texts, Carolyn threatened factual motion on behalf of a pale salon employee, Rasheed Jeremy Carballo.
The texts would change into evidence in factual cases that the salon’s house owners introduced in Missouri’s Taney County final September seeking orders of security against Carballo. They claimed he became as soon as within the support of a wierd harassment campaign that included spamming their industrial with detrimental spurious opinions and staunch texts and emails from the “investigator” named Carolyn.
In the quiz for an uncover of security, salon owner Karen Virtudazo wrote she became as soon as “continually sent emails, texts, cellular phone calls posing as regulation enforcement, attorneys, the Missouri attorney well-liked, Secretary of insist investigator and the U.S. Marshall.” She wrote that one attorney, who she later realized to be spurious, said she became as soon as being sued for $1 million and asked for her Social Security number to guard her. Virtudazo gave it. She soon started receiving credit ranking indicators displaying that any individual became as soon as making use of for loans in her name, she alleged in a police file.
“It became as soon as horrifying,” Virtudazo recalled in a most up-to-date interview at her attorney’s draw of job. And it became as soon as coming at an especially laborious time; her mother had correct died within the Philippines. “I became as soon as very stressed at the time. I didn’t know what became as soon as occurring. So when any individual calls me being a U.S. Marshal, I alarm; when any individual calls me being a insist representative, I alarm.”
The replace salon owner became as soon as being centered, too. A Google myth with the name Kurt Naussany, claiming to be from the “Authorities Investigation Dept” of FDIC, posted a detrimental review for the financial institution the achieve she worked, claiming she had committed embezzlement and fraud.
A most up-to-date immigrant from Belize, Carballo had chanced on work doing nails within the salon. It’d be a hasty gig and an acrimonious sever up with the house owners, following an August 2023 incident whereby the police responded to an argument between Carballo and a customer over the quality of his work.
Carballo didn’t know many folk in Branson. Even handed one of his earliest chums became as soon as a woman named Lisa whom he’d met at a native Starbucks the achieve he became as soon as working as a barista. In cellular phone interviews with NBC Data, Carballo said Lisa urged him that an inheritance had made her properly off and that she became as soon as going within the weed dispensary industrial. Lisa offered him a room in her house, and after the falling out with the salon house owners, the promise of toughen. That toughen, he said, became as soon as lawful in the starting up, however expanded to encompass the harassment campaign and at final the promise of factual help. In court filings and in an interview with NBC Data, Carballo insisted he wasn’t a fragment of any harassment.
“She became as soon as terrorizing these of us,” Carballo said of Lisa’s fixed emails, texts and opinions.
Lisa, who had also been a customer of the salon, reached out to Virtudazo in September, according to an email obtained by NBC Data. Despatched from Lisa’s email address, it forwarded an email sharing well-known functions of an impending lawsuit and investigation into the nail salon on behalf of the Las Vegas mother from the Google review. The forwarded letter included a PDF of a particular person complaint lodged with the Missouri attorney well-liked and became as soon as signed by Carolyn Williams, of Jefferson City, Missouri’s “Investigations Dept,” which does no longer exist.
“No longer appropriate,” Lisa’s email be taught. “That industrial is in serious anxiety.”
Carolyn Williams became as soon as also the name of the representative who filed the scream in January on behalf of Naussany Investments within the draw to power the sale of Graceland.
Carballo said that Lisa first offered to pay for a lawyer to battle the orders of security sought by the salon house owners, however as a replacement, she ended up serving to him file responses in court and accompanied him to a hearing. In January, Carballo filed a quiz to push apart Virtudazo’s protecting uncover case. The submitting lists his address as P.O. Box 514, Kimberling City, MO, an address Carballo said Lisa offered.
The same month, Carolyn Williams, representing Naussany Investments, filed a creditor’s scream against Lisa Marie Presley’s estate in Los Angeles County, record Naussany’s address as the same draw: P.O. Box 514 in Kimberling City.
There had been other connections to the Graceland rip-off, too:
One: In February, Carballo submitted a handwritten letter to the court within the security uncover case. The letter became as soon as sent by strategy of fax from 1-877-361-0412; Carballo said Lisa faxed it on his behalf. In Also can just, any individual calling himself Gregory E. Nassauny well-liked the same number to fax a motion in Shelby County Chancery Court in Tennessee seeking to stop the Presley estate from stopping the foreclosure sale of Graceland.
Two: The texts sent to the salon house owners from Carolyn, who claimed to be a Missouri insist investigator, came from 727-268-7074, the same number listed on paperwork in September linked to the spurious creditor’s scream for Presley’s mortgage in Los Angeles County court. In that submitting, the Naussany firm included a duplicate of an email whereby Kurt Naussany seeks records from U.S. Bank. His email signature involves the 7074 number.
And three: Naussany’s other listed address, P.O. Box 1015 in Hollister, Missouri, is associated with the name and email address Lisa is today the usage of, according to public records databases.
Carballo urged NBC Data he didn’t acknowledge the name Graceland, however Lisa Marie Presley sounded familiar. Carballo lived alongside with his buddy Lisa for about 5 months. Early in 2024, she talked with Carballo a few foreclosure deal and Lisa Marie Presley’s house and one of many simplest ways she and a California lawyer had been going to salvage a few million greenbacks, he said. After being interviewed by NBC Data, Carballo said he went to the FBI with what he knew. An FBI spokesperson said the agency does no longer comment on investigations, including the possibility or likelihood of 1.
Carballo left Branson in February, inspiring to Illinois to be attain household and additional opportunity, he said. Meanwhile, Naussany’s try at a Graceland foreclosure continued. And on Facebook, the Carloyn Naussany myth (whose profile photo of a vehicle out of doors a restore shop NBC Data traced to a California city the achieve Lisa beforehand lived) fired up again — this time offering an even clearer link to Lisa.
In March, Carloyn Naussany posted to Facebook a requirement folk in Branson West and Kimberling City to come support to the King Meals Saver grocery retailer for images with the Easter Bunny. The posts included images of an grownup dressed as the Easter Bunny and baskets on the market. Later, Lisa posted the same images to the Branson Buzz Facebook personnel from her deepest myth and included her cellular phone number.
Reached by cellular phone, Lisa’s dwell-in partner Maria Tazbaz said she offered the Easter baskets at her hardware retailer. “I don’t know who Carolyn is, however these are my Easter baskets,” Tazbaz said. On Google, Tazbaz’s retailer, Mr Riobe Discount Instruments and Extra, got a beautiful Google Overview from “WelderGirl46.”
Welder Lady’s simplest old opinions had been for NV nail salon, and Oakley Auto World, which included a photograph of Lisa posing beside a salesman and her sleek silver Chrysler. The same vehicle became as soon as parked out of doors Lisa’s Kimberling City house final week, a trailer park community on the perimeter of Table Rock Lake the achieve she lives with Tazbaz and her sister, Linda. It’s correct a four-minute power from P.O. Box 514, the achieve Naussany Investments is supposedly essentially based.
“Invent you be aware when the film came out, ‘Secure Me If You Can’?” Lisa’s ex-husband Steven Sullins asked final week in a cellular phone interview with NBC Data, recalling the 2002 Leonardo DiCaprio film a few talented forger and conman. “That’s her. That’s what she does.”
Sullins and Lisa divorced in 2002 after about eight years of marriage. After the divorce, Sullins said he would hear news that Lisa had been arrested for unsuitable checks and fraud. Generally he said victims would contact him and uncover him reports. Sullins said Lisa had been certified as a nursing assistant (Oklahoma Train Department of Effectively being records manufacture encompass a 1992 long-term-care aide certification for a Lisa Sullins), however she became as soon as passing herself off as other issues: an EMT, a hairdresser and an underwater welder.
“She walked into a bar one night and had a doctor’s coat on, had esteem three pagers on her, two cellphones, and she’d be esteem, ‘Oh, I must gallop out of doors and take a name,’” Sullins said. “But I turned spherical and regarded at of us and became as soon as esteem, ‘She ain’t no damn doctor.’”
Lisa and Sullins had one petite one collectively, a boy also named Steve, who lived alongside with his dad. Lisa wasn’t a legitimate parent, her son said in a cellular phone interview, however they be fervent. Final summer, he said Lisa traded in her vehicle and sold him a truck from South Pointe Chrysler Jeep Dodge Ram in Tulsa. Almost in the present day in a while, Kurt Naussany left a review for the same dealership alleging that the industrial current replace-in autos that had been stolen.
Steve said the truck became as soon as Lisa making appropriate on an weak provide to “like him,” a promise that had been made and delayed for years. He said Lisa talked about having a belief, with the money coming from a marriage six or seven years within the past to a Kurt Howell in Las Vegas, who owned a pipeline firm, and for whom she worked as a welder. Public records databases don’t existing any records for him in Nevada, and there are no longer any records of marriages for either Lisa or Kurt Howell in Clark County.
“I’ve never seen the fellow. I’ve never met him,” Steve said of Howell. “I even don’t like any belief who he is, the achieve he’s from, if he’s even real, or if any of this belief is real or the leisure esteem that.”
Lisa became as soon as born in California in 1971 and moved alongside with her household to Cleveland, Oklahoma, when she became as soon as spherical 6. She became as soon as the center petite one of three; her older sister would record their upbringing in a court submitting as “dysfunctional.” Her fogeys owned a bail bonds industrial for which her dad, a Vietnam vet, became as soon as a bounty hunter; he also worked as a correctional officer at a insist penal advanced in Osage County. Her mother died at 44 from a mind aneurysm.
Lisa’s first reported brush with the regulation became as soon as in 1997, when she became as soon as 26 and arrested in Sapulpa, Oklahoma, for writing a bogus examine. For the next twenty years Lisa would be internal and outside of jails, courts and prisons, charged with various crimes, including stealing checks and credit ranking playing cards, committing fraud, working con video games, intimidating witnesses and obstructing investigations. Her cases took years to wind during the courts, in fragment because she became as soon as mainly knotted up in other cases or incarcerated in other jurisdictions. But in 2005, she became as soon as hit with federal charges. Prosecutors claimed she well-liked spurious Social Security numbers to trust extra than $180,000 in loans from Tulsa banks. Lisa pleaded responsible to one depend of making a unsuitable assertion in an application for a mortgage and became as soon as sentenced to twenty months and restitution.
By 2009 Lisa became as soon as on supervised parole, however couldn’t discontinue committing crimes, according to her parole officer, who asked a think to place confidence in striking her support in penal advanced. In a letter to the think, the parole officer outlined Lisa’s infractions: She faked most cancers to salvage sympathy from a court on a rate for bogus checks. She stole a examine while working as a cashier at a Sand Springs KMart, admitting the theft when confronted by retailer security. And on a time out to Springfield, Missouri, Lisa stayed in a industrial king suite at the Ramada Oasis Conference Center and left with out paying for her room. All around the preserve, Lisa posed as an employee planning a convention for KMart’s parent firm, reserving forty eight guest rooms as “fragment of a draw to defraud the hotel,” the parole officer said.
After spending phenomenal of 2010 and 2011 imprisoned in Oklahoma, Lisa became as soon as launched. Over the next three years, she moved 11 instances, basically following a path of lovers whom she met on cyber net relationship sites and repeatedly scammed, according to her probation officer’s file. One man became as soon as out hundreds of bucks after Lisa overjoyed him to mortgage her money to unlock a gold inheritance. At a hearing for the revocation of her free up, the parole officer testified she had “noticed, and tried to discontinue, a sample by the defendant of defrauding her boyfriends.” A think locked her support up.
All around the same time, Lisa’s sister, Linda, two years older, who also goes by a diversity of aliases, became as soon as going through factual troubles of her trust, stemming from an early-aughts investment rip-off that netted hundreds of hundreds.
Linda’s crimes had been extra sophisticated than Lisa’s unsuitable checks and romance scams. In protecting with the government’s case, from spherical 2006, Linda had been luring victims into investing in a spurious hedge fund called RGM Enterprises LLC with guarantees of 40% returns. (One victim said he became as soon as later urged by authorities it stood for “In actuality Wide Money.”) The firm came with a Las Vegas cellular phone number and a esteem Las Vegas draw of job address however indubitably, became as soon as being skedaddle through a put up draw of job box. Promotional provides boasted a properly-organized group, including a Cornell-educated chief working officer, Joshua Nichols. After the FBI did no longer secure any myth of him, the U.S. magistrate think within the case wrote, “it’s miles questionable whether Joshua Nichols is an real particular person.”
In draw of investing the money she got, prosecutors said Linda spent it: $62,000 on trudge, $25,000 on tickets to the Grammys, $15,000 on furniture — the total while sending victims falsified balance sheets displaying enormous beneficial properties. A survey of her sources also chanced on a house, autos, jewellery, a relate and marble statues. When investors started suing her for his or her returns, she well-liked a $5 million investment from her greatest fish, a most up-to-date lottery winner in Maryland, to pay them off, turning the outright rip-off into a roughly Ponzi draw. The FBI became as soon as knocking on her door in 2010 and she became as soon as indicted that December.
Linda’s trial became as soon as delayed for years. Two of her attorneys stop because Linda did no longer pay them or wrote unsuitable checks to quilt their payments, according to court filings. Linda also achieve in numerous requests for continuances attributable to unsuitable properly being, at various instances claiming she had leukemia, thyroid most cancers, lupus, lung most cancers, anemia, pneumonia, enlighten sharp, a mouth an infection, severe complications, a swollen throat, vomiting, no mutter and a cough, amongst other ailments. An independent doctor introduced at the quiz of the government chanced on no myth or evidence of leukemia or any other serious illness.
Linda pleaded responsible to wire fraud and tax fraud and became as soon as sentenced to Forty five months in penal advanced and three years of supervised free up. Her husband at the time, an accountant named Invoice Livolsi, became as soon as sentenced to 24 months for his function in inspiring her sick-gotten beneficial properties. He is now the deputy director of Progressive Penal advanced Ministries and mentors other white-collar criminals.
After her free up in 2019, Linda got a job managing an home advanced in Tulsa. The present property owner urged NBC Data that Linda became as soon as fired after objects within the furnished apartments went missing and the books had been off.
Meanwhile, Lisa became as soon as inspiring spherical. From Oklahoma to Las Vegas to California and at final, in 2023, to Missouri. She rented a house in Branson with the parable that she became as soon as a millionaire and wanted a condo while she decided what she desired to amass. She showed the property manager financial institution statements to speak her wealth, according to the landlord, Andrew Passey, who she later sued for damages to her property from a basement flood. She dropped the lawsuit after Passey filed a counterclaim for attorney costs.
Lisa and Linda started residing collectively again final year.
There are echoes of Linda’s spurious investment firm’s Ponzi draw within the Graceland rip-off, however no evidence tying her to the Naussany foreclosure caper. Linda, who didn’t return several requests for interviews, sleeps plenty of the day, according to her pale housemate, Carballo, and at night stays basically in her room, “continuously, continuously on the laptop.”
It’s puzzling to place confidence in how Lisa might well possibly additionally need graduated from limited-time hustling of boyfriends and wide-box stores to an try at multimillion-buck fraud and the theft of 1 of the nation’s most liked landmarks.
One early morning in June, an NBC Data reporter knocked on Lisa’s door. Lisa came out to the porch and for 13 minutes answered questions relating to the connections between her and Naussany.
Lisa said she didn’t like a P.O. Box, and didn’t know any Naussany. She said she didn’t put up images of Easter baskets to Facebook, sooner than remembering that she had, however simplest to her deepest myth, she said — no longer the one belonging to Carloyn Naussany. She said her IDs had been stolen final year and that she had filed a file with the county. (Representatives for Taney County and Stone County had been unable to detect this form of myth.) She said that she would be taking the list of Naussany connections to the sheriff that day to file a complaint of identity theft.
And what about Graceland and the nail salon and the total hyperlinks pointing support to her?
“I even don’t like any earthly belief what you’re talking about,” Lisa said.
After leaving Lisa’s porch, the reporter followed up in a text with well-known functions of every Naussany connection. When asked whether she had filed a file with the sheriff, Lisa responded with a cease and desist letter, demanding the reporter discontinue all conversation.
Within half an hour of the reporter’s talk over with, the Carloyn Naussany Facebook myth had been deleted.
Brandy Zadrozny
Brandy Zadrozny is a senior reporter for NBC Data. She covers misinformation, extremism and the cyber net.
Jon Schuppe
Jon Schuppe is an challenge reporter for NBC Data, essentially based in Unique York.
Donna Mendell
contributed
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