Elvis’s Granddaughter Sues to Block Sale of Graceland, Charging Fraud

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 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.

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.

Even as bills 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.