JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – As a legal battle unfolds over the Graceland property in Tennessee, court documents revealed some Jacksonville ties.
An auction scheduled to happen Thursday was blocked by a Memphis judge after Elvis Presley’s granddaughter, Riley Keough, filed a lawsuit calling the whole thing “fraudulent” and sought a temporary restraining order.
According to the lawsuit, part of the fraud is a purported signature from her mother, Lisa Marie Presley, allegedly notarized in Duval County.
Naussany Investments and Private Lending claimed Elvis Presley’s estate failed to repay a loan that used the property as collateral.
A public notice for a foreclosure sale of the estate in Memphis was posted earlier this month claiming the Presleys owe $3.8 million after failing to repay a 2018 loan.
Keough is fighting the claim in court. She inherited the estate after her mother, and Elvis’s only child, Lisa Marie Presley passed away in 2023.
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The lawsuit reads in part: “These documents are fraudulent. Lisa Marie Presley never borrowed money from Naussany Investments and never gave a deed of trust.”
Two Jacksonville addresses are listed in the lawsuit. News4JAX visited both on Thursday.
One is the office of local attorney Brad Russell who is part of Keough’s legal team, according to the lawsuit. The second address is to a post office in Springfield, one of three addresses for Naussany Investments listed in the lawsuit.
The company claims to be from Jacksonville, but News4JAX found no office address in the court documents, just the address of the post office.
The lawsuit says a deed of trust for Graceland was notarized in Duval County with Lisa Marie Presley’s signature in May 2018.
That detail is key to why the documents presented by Naussany Investments are being called fraudulent. According to an affidavit filed with the lawsuit, the Florida notary said she has never met Lisa Marie Presley and that she did not notarize the deed.
“It’s very puzzling to me because there’s a lot of times when you say there’s two sides to a story, but if you’re talking about lending money, it’s generally either the money was borrowed or it wasn’t,” Board-Certified Real Estate Attorney Barry Ansbacher said. “I think it really highlights some of the value we have for consumer protection in Florida. That can never happen in Florida.”
Ansbacher said Florida is known as a “judicial foreclosure state.”
That means that any foreclosure claim must go through the court system.
Tennessee, on the other hand, is a non-judicial foreclosure state. That allows lenders to foreclose on properties without involving the courts, which is what appears to have almost happened at Graceland.
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“It brings up the question: how many other homes are there in these states that were maybe not as well-known as Graceland or the Presley’s where people have legitimate claims, and they lost their property because they weren’t able to race to the courthouse in time?” Ansbacher said.
News4JAX called multiple numbers for Naussany Investments that were listed in the lawsuit. One number was out of service and another number was automated advertising “affordable vacation packages.”
Bradley Russell, the local lawyer representing Elvis’s granddaughter, declined to comment.
Court records do not show a lawyer for Naussany Investments.