Suspicious minds were correct to question the validity of a foreclosure sale of Elvis Presley’s Graceland estate in Memphis TN and now a scammer in Nigeria is all shook up. The scammer has taken full credit for setting up an auction to sell Graceland, according to the New York Post, adding the scam left Presley’s granddaughter, Riley Keough, traumatized. Keough is the owner of Graceland, which she inherited from her mother, Lisa Marie Presley when she died in January 2023, but the ownership came into dispute after a mystery company named Naussany Investments and Private Lending LLC claimed the right to auction off Graceland. A Memphis judge put a halt to the foreclosure sale after questions were raised about the validity of legal documents filed by Naussany. According to DailyMail.com (DM) Keough's lawyer Jeff Germany “unraveled the web of lies in court, outlining the 'significant serious allegations regarding the authenticity' of the documents.” Keough’s suit said she had received a number of emails from Kurt Naussany, demanding she send money to cover her mother’s alleged debt, with standard promissory notes and a 2018 deed of trust for Graceland attached, both bearing Lisa Marie's signature. The deed of trust carried the signature of Kimberly Philbrick, a notary in Duval County, FL, who insisted she had 'never met Lisa Marie nor notarized any document for her, reports DM, adding Philbrick wrote in an affidavit, 'I don't know why my signature appears on this document.' On Tuesday, the apparent mastermind behind the bizarre scandal was unmasked by the New York Times (NYT), which reported a person based in Nigeria with a Naussany-associated email address had reached out to it and taken credit for the scam. “The person in question said he and his team often scam the vulnerable and elderly,” said NYT. In an email to the NYT, an individual wrote in Luganda, a language spoken in Uganda, “We figure out how to steal. That’s what we do.” “I had fun figuring this one out and it didn’t succeed very well,” they added Graceland has been a fixture in Memphis since Elvis bought the estate for $102,500 in 1957, the same year he released the hits Blue Christmas and All Shook Up, reports the New York Post. The estate, voted the most popular museum in America in 2023, spans 14 acres and attracts 500,000 visitors annually, bringing in around US$10 million during a typical year. The estate is worth between US$400 to US$500 million as of 2020, according to a Presley estate executive cited in a report by Rolling Stone. Lisa Marie inherited it after Elvis’ death in 1977 and it opened to the public as a museum in 1982, with Keough becoming the heir after her death. The scandal caught the interest of FBI officials who considered launching a criminal probe and contacted Keough, possibly to show the scammer some Jailhouse Rock.
