EGN NEWS DESK
Lawyers for the actress Riley Keough, the granddaughter of Elvis Presley, have sued to cease what they are saying is a fraudulent scheme to promote Graceland, the household’s cherished former house in Memphis.
Court papers that Ms. Keough’s legal professionals filed this month declare that an organization planning to public sale off Graceland is fraudulently claiming that her mom — Elvis’s daughter, Lisa Marie Presley, who died in 2023 — had borrowed cash and put Graceland up as collateral. The papers say that the corporate, Naussany Investments & Private Lending LLC, “seems to be a false entity” and that the paperwork it offered concerning the mortgage had been additionally faux.
“There is not any foreclosures sale,” Elvis Presley Enterprises, which operates Graceland, mentioned in a press release, by which it additionally mentioned that the lawsuit had been filed to “cease the fraud.”
Graceland, a preferred vacationer attraction, is a significant supply of earnings for Elvis Presley Enterprises and the household belief.
A consultant for Ms. Keough, who controls her household’s belief, didn’t instantly reply to a request for touch upon Tuesday. A lawyer representing Ms. Keough within the case additionally didn’t reply.
Months after Lisa Marie Presley died, Naussany Investments offered paperwork claiming that she had borrowed $3.8 million from the corporate and “gave a deed of belief encumbering Graceland as safety,” in accordance with courtroom papers filed in Shelby County, Tenn. Copies of the paperwork had been supplied to The New York Times by Elvis Presley Enterprises.
Ms. Keough’s lawsuit claims that whereas a promissory word associated to the alleged debt appeared to have been notarized in Florida in 2018, the notary public named on the paperwork, Kimberly Philbrick, has denied doing so. “I’ve by no means met Lisa Marie Presley, nor have I ever notarized a doc signed by Lisa Marie Presley,” an affidavit from Ms. Philbrick states.
Naussany Investments had scheduled a sale of Graceland for Thursday, the courtroom papers say. But after Ms. Keough’s legal professionals argued that the deed was fraudulent, the courtroom issued a restraining order barring any sale, in accordance with the paperwork. The paperwork say a listening to has been scheduled for Wednesday.
Attempts to succeed in Naussany Investments by the e-mail addresses and cellphone numbers listed for the corporate within the courtroom paperwork weren’t instantly profitable. One listed cellphone quantity was mentioned to be not in service.
Last 12 months, Ms. Keough and her grandmother Priscilla Presley engaged in a monthslong authorized battle that finally left Ms. Keough as the only real trustee of the monetary instrument established by her mom, the Promenade Trust.
Lisa Marie Presley established the belief in 1993. And though its belongings grew to greater than $100 million by 2005, she compiled large debt over time, forcing the sale of 85 % of Elvis Presley Enterprises to assist pay her payments.
In a 2022 earnings and expense declaration, Lisa Marie Presley estimated that her money owed exceeded $3 million. But the submitting didn’t specify what she owed cash for or to whom.
Even as prices have typically mounted, the household has held on to the principle home at Graceland — an eight-bedroom, eight-bath Colonial revival house in Memphis that served as Elvis Presley’s private house from 1957 till his dying, in 1977, on the age of 42. The home was appraised at $5.6 million in 2021.
But Graceland has turn into price much more as a vacationer attraction. In 2022, operations at Graceland generated at the least $80 million, most of which helps Elvis Presley Enterprises. The household belief retains 15 % of Elvis Presley Enterprises.
