Lawyers for the actress Riley Keough, the granddaughter of Elvis Presley, have sued to stop what they say is a fraudulent scheme to sell Graceland, the family’s cherished former home in Memphis.
Court papers that Ms. Keough’s lawyers filed this month claim that a company planning to auction off Graceland is fraudulently claiming that her mother — Elvis’s daughter, Lisa Marie Presley, who died in 2023 — had borrowed money and put Graceland up as collateral. The papers say that the company, Naussany Investments & Private Lending LLC, “appears to be a false entity” and that the documents it presented about the loan were also fake.
“There is no foreclosure sale,” Elvis Presley Enterprises, which operates Graceland, said in a statement, in which it also said that the lawsuit had been filed to “stop the fraud.”
Graceland, a popular tourist attraction, is a major source of income for Elvis Presley Enterprises and the family trust.
A representative for Ms. Keough, who controls her family’s trust, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. A lawyer representing Ms. Keough in the case also did not respond.
Months after Lisa Marie Presley died, Naussany Investments presented documents claiming that she had borrowed $3.8 million from the company and “gave a deed of trust encumbering Graceland as security,” according to court papers filed in Shelby County, Tenn. Copies of the documents were provided to The New York Times by Elvis Presley Enterprises.
Ms. Keough’s lawsuit claims that while a promissory note related to the alleged debt appeared to have been notarized in Florida in 2018, the notary public named on the documents, Kimberly Philbrick, has denied doing so. “I have never met Lisa Marie Presley, nor have I ever notarized a document signed by Lisa Marie Presley,” an affidavit from Ms. Philbrick states.
Naussany Investments had scheduled a sale of Graceland for Thursday, the court papers say. But after Ms. Keough’s lawyers argued that the deed was fraudulent, the court issued a restraining order barring any sale, according to the documents. The documents say a hearing has been scheduled for Wednesday.
Attempts to reach Naussany Investments through the email addresses and phone numbers listed for the company in the court documents were not immediately successful. One listed phone number was said to be no longer in service.
Last year, Ms. Keough and her grandmother Priscilla Presley engaged in a monthslong legal battle that eventually left Ms. Keough as the sole trustee of the financial instrument established by her mother, the Promenade Trust.
Lisa Marie Presley established the trust in 1993. And although its assets grew to more than $100 million by 2005, she compiled massive debt over time, forcing the sale of 85 percent of Elvis Presley Enterprises to help pay her bills.
In a 2022 income and expense declaration, Lisa Marie Presley estimated that her debts exceeded $3 million. But the filing did not specify what she owed money for or to whom.
Even as costs have sometimes mounted, the family has held on to the main house at Graceland — an eight-bedroom, eight-bath Colonial revival home in Memphis that served as Elvis Presley’s personal home from 1957 until his death, in 1977, at the age of 42. The house was appraised at $5.6 million in 2021.
But Graceland has become worth far more as a tourist attraction. In 2022, operations at Graceland generated at least $80 million, most of which supports Elvis Presley Enterprises. The family trust retains 15 percent of Elvis Presley Enterprises.
