His story Pop music is full of crazy yarns, and Elvis Presley and his wildlife were no exception. But the ongoing saga of the Presley family took a particularly strange turn last month when a mysterious company announced the sale of Graceland, the 14-acre Memphis home and property that Presley bought in 1957. Since his death in 1977, Graceland has become a major tourist attraction and ownership was later transferred to Presley's daughter, Lisa Marie.
Months after her death, in January 2023, however, a company no one had ever heard of announced it was foreclosing on the property. Graceland's current owner, Lisa Marie Riley Keough's daughter, immediately took legal action and a Tennessee court halted the suspicious sale. However, the whole ordeal left a lot of hunka, hunka burning questions in its wake.
Who Tried to Sell Elvis Presley's Graceland?
According to legal documents filed by Keogh's camp in May, a mysterious entity calling itself “Naussany Investments & Private Lending LLC” claimed it was going to put Graceland on the auction block. The company alleged that the late Lisa Marie had allegedly borrowed $3.8 million from Naussany, using Graceland as collateral. In September 2023, the company filed court documents in California containing Lisa Marie Presley's debt and a document allegedly signed by her. With Presley dead, Naussany supposedly wanted her money back, and the sale of the property was initially announced for May.
Who really owns Graceland?
For a long time, Graceland was owned by Lisa Marie Presley, who inherited the property when she turned 25 in 1993. In 2005, Presley sold 85 percent of Elvis Presley Enterprises to the company he also owned American Idol, but retained ownership of Graceland and other family assets. Later, Joel Weinshanker, who made his name in the collectibles business as the founder of the National Entertainment Collectibles Association, was put in charge of EPE, including overseeing Graceland (Lisa Marie, however, still owned it). When Lisa Marie died in 2023, Keogh became the new superintendent of Graceland. Lisa Marie's mother, Priscilla, initially disputed the ownership issues, but the matter was settled out of court. Keough was named sole trustee of Lisa Marie Presley's estate (and owner of Graceland), with twin sisters Harper and Finley (still teenagers, both from Lisa Marie's marriage to Michael Lockwood) named secondary trustees.
How did the sale of Graceland stop?
Keogh's lawyers stopped the sale through a lawsuit claiming that Naussany was, in their words, “a bogus entity”. In court documents, Keogh's attorney wrote, “Lisa Marie Presley never borrowed money from Naussany Investments and never gave a deed of trust to Naussany Investments,” and claimed the loan documents were “fraudulent” and included forgeries of Lisa's signatures Marie. Elvis Presley Enterprises issued a statement saying, “There is no foreclosure sale.”
Many media outlets, including Rolling rock, The New York Times and NBC News, contacted two email addresses for Naussany listed in the court documents. Those sent by RS on two separate occasions they either went unanswered or bounced.
The mystery continued in court: At a hearing in Tennessee after Keogh's lawyers filed the lawsuit, no one representing Naussany showed up. The Memphis Commercial Appeal then mentioned had received an email “riddled with grammatical errors” from someone named Gregory Naussany, saying the company was “withdrawing all claims with prejudice.” (“Grigoris” also claimed that he was not the same “Kurt” who was the company's original contact.)
What happened after the sale of Graceland was blocked?
Both The New York Times and NBC News finally received a response to emails from someone claiming to be a dark web scammer based in Nigeria. “We understand how to steal,” the person He wrote in the Times. “That's what we do,” adding, “I had fun figuring it out, and it didn't work out too well.” As the Times It is noted, however, that the filing was faxed from a number in North America. Another note read: “We sit back and laugh at you idiots and watch you make fun of yourselves. Come find us in Nigeria”. With that, the case seemed to be closed.
Was a Grandma in Missouri Behind the Graceland Scam?
Last week, NBC News published an in-depth research report which listed the scammer as possibly “a grandmother in Branson, Missouri, a con artist with a decades-long rap record of romance scams, forged checks and bank fraud totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars, for which she has served time in state and federal prison.”
According to the report, the woman was a nurse's aide, among other jobs, but also claimed to be an “EMT, hairdresser and underwater welder” and had spent time in prison for “stealing checks and credit cards, committing fraud, running a scam [and] intimidating witnesses”. “She appeared to use the name Naussany to post negative reviews of people and businesses she didn't like,” NBC reported, adding, “It's confusing to think how [she] could have graduated from micro-used boy and big box stores to a multi-million dollar fraud attempt and the theft of one of the country's most beloved attractions.”
In early June, NBC News located the woman in a trailer park in Branson, Missouri, and presented her findings. he claimed he had been a victim of identity theft and had “no idea” what the reporter was talking about. Soon after, according to NBC, the woman issued a “cease and desist” to the network for “any and all defamation, libel and/or slander… Failure to comply with stop and stop to request and/or return the signed assurance “within the specified time” will leave me no alternative but to pursue all available legal and equitable remedies to protect my and my family's character and/or reputation. » (Efforts from RS to reach the woman was unsuccessful.)
What about Graceland now?
It's still in the Presley family. As for any possible investigation into what happened Rolling rock contact the Tennessee Attorney General's office for information. “The Tennessee Attorney General's Office reviewed the Graceland matter and it quickly became apparent that this was the most appropriate matter for federal law enforcement,” a spokesman said. RS. “We have confidence in our federal partners and know they will handle this appropriately.” In what it called its “standard rule,” the FBI also told RS it would not comment on the “likelihood or likelihood” of any investigation.
from our partners at https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/elvis-presley-graceland-scam-missouri-1235043250/
