Elvis Presley Graceland Scam: Who Tried To Steal The Estate?
In May, the Memphis home of Elvis Presley was allegedly going on the auction block. Who orchestrated the ruse — and what happens now?
THE HISTORY OF pop music is littered with crazy yarns, and Elvis Presley and his wild life weren’t exempt. But the ongoing saga of the Presley family took an especially strange turn last month, when a mysterious company announced a foreclosure sale of Graceland, the 14-acre home and property in Memphis that Presley bought in 1957. Since his death in 1977, Graceland has become a major tourist attraction, and its 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’s daughter Riley Keough, immediately took legal action, and a Tennessee court halted the suspicious sale. Still, the whole ordeal left many hunka, hunka burning questions in its wake.
Who tried to sell Elvis Presley’s Graceland?
According to legal paperwork filed by Keough’s camp in May, a mysterious entity calling itself Naussany Investments & Private Lending LLC claimed that it was about to put Graceland on the auction block. The company claimed that the late Lisa Marie had supposedly borrowed $3.8 million from Naussany, using Graceland as collateral. In September 2023, the company filed court papers in California listing Lisa Marie Presley’s debt and a document allegedly signed by her. With Presley dead, Naussany supposedly wanted its money back, and a sale of the property was initially announced for May.
Who owns Graceland anyway?
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 an 85 percent interest in Elvis Presley Enterprises to the company that also owned American Idol, but she retained ownership of Graceland and other family possessions. Later, Joel Weinshanker, who made his name in the collectibles business as 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, Keough became Graceland’s new overseer. Lisa Marie’s mother, Priscilla, initially disputed the ownership issues, but the matter was resolved out of court. Keough was named sole trustee of Lisa Marie Presley’s estate (and owner of Graceland), with twin sisters Harper and Finley (who are still teenagers, both from Lisa Marie’s marriage to Michael Lockwood) named sub-trusts.
