In September, eight months after Lisa Marie Presley’s death, Naussany Investments did file papers in probate court in California posting what it said was Presley’s debt from 2018. It included a deed of trust, with a signature represented as Presley’s, that put forward Graceland as collateral.
But Clint Anderson, the deputy administrator of the Shelby County Register of Deeds, said his office does not have on file a deed of trust or any other documents from Naussany Investments “to legitimise this company foreclosing on any other property in Shelby County”.
Elvis Presley with his girlfriend Yvonne Lime at Graceland circa 1957. Credit: AP
In its September filing, Naussany Investments said it would agree to settle what it described as the debt for a discounted $US2.85 million, which would be paid by the Presley family trust. But the trust, now led by Lisa Marie Presley’s daughter, actress Riley Keough, did not view the debt as legitimate.
Naussany Investments then took out an ad in Memphis newspaper The Commercial Appeal, giving notice that it planned to auction Graceland in a foreclosure sale last week.
That led Keough to court last week, where she fought the foreclosure, declaring in a legal filing that the loan was a fiction, the company “a false entity” and the effort to sell Graceland a fraud. The signatures of Presley and of a notary public on some of the documents had been forged, lawyers for Keough said.
Loading
A judge blocked any immediate foreclosure on Graceland, saying that he needed to review more evidence.
No one representing the Naussany company attended the hearing. But shortly before it began, the court received a filing from a person identifying himself as a representative of the company, Gregory E. Naussany. The filing disputed Keough’s allegations, asked for time to present a defence and included an email address, gregoryenaussanyniplflorida@hotmail.com, for further contact.
By the end of the day, though, Naussany Investments appeared to have given up. The Commercial Appeal and the Associated Press reported receiving emails from the company withdrawing its claims. Elvis Presley Enterprises, which operates Graceland as a tourist attraction, told the Times that a lawyer for the family’s trust had also received an email from a person purporting to be Gregory Naussany who said Naussany Investments did not intend to move forward with a sale.
Court records, however, do not yet list any motion by Naussany Investments to drop its claim.
In a bizarre case with so many unanswered questions, it is difficult to determine how much weight to place on the recent communications to the Times from the email address associated with Naussany Investments. While the writer said he is based in Nigeria, it is difficult to pinpoint his location.
Naussany Investments has listed several email addresses in its court filings. Both emails received by the Times in recent days came from the address associated with Gregory Naussany that was listed in the company’s court filing. In each, the writer advanced the view that he was part of a sophisticated identity fraud operation that had particularly targeted Americans, who were described as gullible.
When the Times sought further clarification on specific issues, the writer replied, “You don’t have to understand”. The writer did not suggest any reasoning for being so forthcoming in the emails beyond taking credit for what he described as the ring’s success in other cases.
“I am the one who creates trouble,” the writer said to begin his first email.
Tennessee Attorney-General Jonathan Skrmetti said his office would review Naussany Investments and investigate its attempt to foreclose on what he said was the state’s most “beloved” home. A spokesperson for the office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
On Friday, even before the recent emails from the company had been sent, Darrell Castle, a Memphis lawyer who has worked frequently on foreclosures for more than 40 years, called the whole situation “extremely unusual to the point of being unbelievable”.
Loading
Mark Sunderman, a real estate professor at the University of Memphis, was struck by the audacity of such an effort but also noted how vulnerable the system can be.
“They picked the wrong piece of property,” he said. “If this had not been such a high-profile piece of property, they might have gotten away with it.”