Was the attempted sale of Graceland a scam from Nigeria? Latest updates

Graceland has always been a place of pilgrimage for tourists from around the world wishing to pay their respects to the late Elvis Presley.

But recently, the King’s Memphis estate has become less a mecca for pop culture than a mecca for the bizarre.

An attempted foreclosure at auction due to an alleged loan taken out by Lisa Marie Presley from the mysterious Naussany Investments and Private Lending. A lawsuit filed by Graceland owner Riley Keough claiming the attempted foreclosure was a fraud and the documents were falsified. And now emails in multiple languages are being sent to various media outlets claiming to be from the person behind the scam.

“The Tennessee Attorney General’s Office has become aware of an email from an individual claiming to be Gregory Naussany who says, in essence, that he is a Nigerian scammer. We will continue to review the issue of the failed seizure attempt of the iconic Graceland, beloved home of Elvis Presley,” Amy Lannom Wilhite, communications director for the Tennessee Attorney General, said in an email Wednesday.

Here is the latest news on the investigation into Naussany, the lawsuit against the entity and the alleged scammer’s emails.

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What are the next legal steps regarding the attempted seizure of Graceland?

To begin, the seizure was halted after a hearing in Shelby County Chancery Court on May 22. Chancellor JoeDae Jenkins ruled that the pending foreclosure sale could not proceed.

On May 24, Memphis-based law firm Morton & Germany – which represents Keough (the daughter of the late Lisa Marie Presley) and The Promenade Trust – filed the court-ordered injunction following the May 22 hearing . The order halted the foreclosure sale and upholds the restraining order filed by Keough and The Promenade Trust, which controls the Graceland estate, regarding the sale and fraudulent claims in the lawsuit.

Representatives for Morton & Germany told The Commercial Appeal that no further litigation or hearings are planned regarding the matter. This is the result of the May 22 hearing and the arrival of an ongoing investigation by the offices of Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti. On May 23, Skrmetti officially announced that his office would begin investigating a fraud case involving Naussany Investments’ claims on Graceland.

Did Naussany Investments admit that the attempt to seize Graceland was a scam?

There was no shortage of twists and turns concerning the Graceland seizure case and the alleged representatives of Naussany Investments.

The initial lawsuit filed by Keough’s legal team names two people affiliated with the company: Kurt Naussany and Carolyn Williams. At the start of the hearing on May 22, a certain Grégory Naussany entered the scene, first filing a request to postpone the hearing. This request was rejected by the court.

After the hearing, the alleged Gregory Naussany emailed The Commercial Appeal and claimed to be dropping the foreclosure case. Despite this claim, the Shelby County Chancery Clerk’s Office confirmed that it has not received any correspondence from the company since the hearing concluded on the morning of May 22. As of Thursday May 29, the court had still not received any correspondence from Naussany Investments.

The email was riddled with grammatical errors and the alleged Gregory Naussany sent The Commercial Appeal a follow-up email claiming that Kurt Naussany was no longer affiliated with the company and had not been since 2015. Additionally, the emails received from Gregory Naussany came from a Hotmail Account.

HISTORY OF GRACELAND:Graceland looked like “a Twilight Zone” when it opened in 1982. Today, it’s more of a house.

The other two emails associated with the company are Outlook accounts and are both listed in the lawsuit filed by Morton & Germany. Carolyn Williams’ email contained three “L”s instead of two in “LLC.”

Following the emergence of Gregory Naussany, the email associated with Kurt Naussany contacted The Commercial Appeal on Saturday, May 25. This email from the alleged Kurt Naussany came after a “please do not contact any further requests” from the user.

Kurt Naussany’s email to The Commercial Appeal was written in Spanish. Using Google Translate, the email states:

“For all the press, I am the Yahoo Ring Leader of Nigeria. I have Google worms in the United States, the Presly is all made up and a hoax, my network preys on the dead and the elderly for money. money, we make things up finding things on Intanet to extract money from American citizens, it’s something made up for my worms to get money As you know, we Nigerian Yahoos do. This has been happening for many years. We have been stealing US birth and death certificates, hacking people’s accounts, making up addresses, stealing identities, searching everything, and hacking into all kinds of records. We have hurt innocent people who don’t know. that we took their identities and used innocent people’s names to do it We stole millions from you Americans, you blind fools We move on to the next project and continue to drink a threat from the press and we. let’s laugh at you idiots and watch you make a fool of yourself. Come find us in Nigeria.

In the electronic signature, there is a request to translate the message from Nigerian to English to understand it (it is written in Spanish), as well as the contact details of the Hotmail address associated with Gregory Naussany.

On May 28, The New York Times reported receiving a similar email from Naussany Investments, but some details differed. The New York Times reported that the alleged representative of Naussany Investments claimed to be a “ring leader on the dark web” and that the network preyed on elderly and deceased people, “especially those in Florida and California “. Additionally, the email received by The New York Times was written in Luganda, a Bantu language spoken in Uganda, according to the report.

Other media outlets, including the Daily Memphian, reported receiving an email from the same account, but the details of the message differ. In the email sent to the Daily Memphian, the outlet reported that the message was written in English and Ganda (also a dialect of Uganda) and claimed to have “verses in AZ.”

What will happen next in the Graceland / Naussany Investments case?

At this time, no additional hearings are confirmed regarding the foreclosure case. With the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office reviewing the fraud case, any additional news at this point will likely come from that investigation.

On Tuesday, The Commercial Appeal contacted the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation regarding the case. TBI Communications Director Josh Devine said the TBI has not received any request from the Shelby County Attorney General, which would be the mechanism for the TBI to open an investigation.

The Shelby County District Attorney General’s Office did not respond to our request for comment.

When asked about Shelby County’s involvement or the process of partnering with local and state agencies for the investigation, the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office did not provide additional information or comment at this time.

The Tennessee Attorney General’s Office has provided additional consumer safety resources regarding real estate scams.

Neil Strebig is a reporter at The Commercial Appeal. He can be reached at neil.strebig@commercialappeal.com, 901-426-0679 or via X/Twitter,@neilStrebig.

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