The mysterious company behind a plot to sell Graceland to Elvis Presley’s family claims to be a Nigerian scam kingpin.
Bizarre emails written in the Ugandan language claimed the network was targeting “gullible” Americans, but the music icon’s family “beat me at my own game.”
Naussany Investments & Private Lending LLC came out of the woodwork last week to claim that the King of Rock’s daughter, Lisa Marie Presley, owed it $3.8 million.
But the attempt was thwarted in Memphis Chancery Court by Chancellor JoeDae Jenkins after Elvis’s granddaughter, Riley Keough, 34, requested an injunction.
Elvis Presley’s Graceland mansion was set to be sold at a foreclosure auction on May 23 after Naussany Investments & Private Lending LLC claimed it was owed $3.8 million.
The alleged lender claimed that Lisa Marie Presley (right) put up Graceland as collateral for the loan and never paid it back, but her daughter Riley Keough (left) blocked the sale.
After DailyMail.com emailed an address in a court file for ‘Gregory Naussany’, it said the attempt to sell Graceland was being called off.
What Naussany was and what really happened remained a mystery as no trace of him could be found in the real world: no working phone number, all the dresses were post office boxes and nothing was recorded anywhere.
So he New York Times I received a response from gregoryenaussanyniplflorida@hotmail.com, the address listed in the court file, stating that the whole thing was an elaborate scam.
“I’m the one making trouble,” the self-confessed scammer began in the first of two emails on Friday.
He claimed to be the head of a scam ring that preyed on dead people, the elderly, and unsuspecting Americans.
Birth certificates and other identification documents of “gullible” brands, mostly living in California and Florida, were mined for details to make the scams successful.
‘We figured out how to steal. That’s what we do,” the scammer admitted, posing as Naussany.
“I had a lot of fun figuring this out and it didn’t work out very well.”
The con artist admitted that they had been discovered and the game was over, and congratulated Keough for defeating them.
“Your client has nothing to worry about…they win from it,” they wrote. “She beat me at my own game.”
The one-page fax signed by Gregory Naussany and received by the court included the email gregoryenaussanyniplflorida@hotmail.com, from which the scammer responded
Seasoned attorneys and real estate experts were stunned by the ruse, with one calling it “extremely unusual to the point of unbelievable.”
“They picked the wrong property,” Mark Sunderman, a real estate professor at the University of Memphis, told the newspaper.
“If it hadn’t been such a high-profile property, they could have gotten away with it.”
The NYT wrote that the emails raised more questions and that it was difficult to determine the veracity of the claims.
Every time he tried to clarify details about the deception, he was told “you don’t need to understand” and the scammer never specified why he was confessing it.
Translators said the Luganda, a Bantu language spoken in Uganda, in the emails was “clunky,” even though the English in the court documents was nearly perfect.
The court filing was also faxed to the Shelby County, Tennessee, Chancery Court from a toll-free U.S. number.
The FBI is believed to be investigating the case and is “interested” in launching a criminal investigation into the attempted sale.
The effort was thwarted in Chancery Court in Memphis by Chancellor JoeDae Jenkins after Elvis’s granddaughter, Riley Keough, 34, requested an injunction.
The bizarre saga began in September when Naussany began harassing Keough, alleging that her mother, who died last year, put up Graceland as collateral on the 2015 loan and failed to pay by the due date in 2022.
Keough refused to pay, so he offered a ‘reduced’ settlement of $2.8 million and filed a collection lawsuit in a Los Angeles court. That didn’t work either.
Naussany responded by placing a classified ad in a local Memphis newspaper announcing that he would hold the foreclosure sale on the steps of a Memphis courthouse on May 23, when Graceland would be sold to the “highest and best bidder.”
Keough’s attorney, Jeff Germany, unraveled the web of lies in court and highlighted the “serious and important allegations regarding the authenticity” of the documents.
Keough’s lawsuit says Kurt Naussany sent him numerous emails seeking to collect his mother’s alleged debt, attaching a standard promissory note and a 2018 deed of trust for Graceland, both with Lisa Marie’s signature.
The suspicious documents presented by Naussany included a deed of trust notarized by Kimberly Philbrick, a Duval County, Florida, notary, who insisted that she had “never met Lisa Marie or notarized any documents for her.”
“I do not know why my signature appears on this document,” he wrote in a sworn statement.
Elvis Presley strolls the grounds of his Graceland estate circa 1957
Elvis plays an electric bass inside Graceland in this photo released March 7, 1965.
The wording of the trust deed also included an inconsistent reference to ‘online notarization’ that was not authorized in Florida or mentioned in Duval County paperwork until 2020, two years after the deed was supposedly drafted.
“While the documents bear signatures that resemble those of Lisa Marie Presley, Lisa Marie Presley did not actually sign the documents,” the lawsuit insists.
“The alleged promissory note and deed of trust are products of fraud and the persons who participated in the creation of said documents are believed to be guilty of the crime of forgery.”
The documents mailed by Naussany included the return address of a UPS store in Jacksonville. A Missouri address was, likewise, a post office box.
When DailyMail.com called the phone number listed in Kurt Naussany’s contact details, the line was not in service.
The German version of events was not challenged at all, because no one in favor of Naussany showed up in Shelby County Chancery Court to argue against him.
In fact, he told the court that he had had “no contact” with Nassauny, any attorney acting on his behalf, or his alleged boss, Kurt Naussany. It is unknown what relationship Kurt and Gregory Nassauny have.
Chancellor Jenkins said at Wednesday’s hearing that his office had received a request overnight from someone calling himself Gregory Naussany requesting an extension of time.
“It appears to be a one-page facsimile,” he said in the process: “The court will deny the request.”
The King of Rock and Roll purchased the Graceland property in 1957 for $102,500, the same year he recorded a string of iconic hits, including ‘Blue Christmas’ and ‘All Shook Up’; seen in 1956
Pictured: Priscilla Presley, Lisa Marie Presley and Riley Keough.
The document called Keough’s claims “baseless” and did not warrant a court order, and asked for the opportunity to present a defense.
But when contacted by email at the filing, Nassauny said he was “withdrawing all claims with prejudice,” meaning they could not be raised again.
“Because the deed of trust was not recorded and the loan was obtained in a different state, legal actions would have to be filed in multiple states and Naussany Investments & Private Lending will not be able to proceed,” he wrote in the email.
‘This arises from consultation with the company’s lawyers. There was no harm to Mrs Keough from her mother’s bad LMP habits and poor money management (sic)’.
When asked to clarify whether he was abandoning all efforts to reclaim the alleged $3.8 million he claims to have lent the late Lisa Marie Presley, Nassauny said in a follow-up: “According to the attorney, it’s in our best interest, since multiple filings would have to be filed in 3 different states. The company will no longer comment.”
According to the FBI’s 2022 Internet Crime Report, about 11,827 people in the U.S. were victims of real estate fraud (a small percentage of the 87 million U.S. homeowners), but the numbers are rising.