Lifestyle
A judge blocks the foreclosure sale of Elvis' Graceland, after his heir alleges fraud
Elvis Presley pictured with then-girlfriend Yvonne Lime at his home Graceland in Memphis, Tennessee around 1957.
AP
hide caption
toggle caption
AP
Elvis Presley pictured with then-girlfriend Yvonne Lime at his home Graceland in Memphis, Tennessee around 1957.
AP
A judge in Tennessee has blocked a foreclosure sale of Elvis Presley’s Graceland compound, after his granddaughter sued to stop it.
A company called Naussany Investments & Private Lending LLC advertised that such a sale would take place on Thursday, saying the trust that controls Graceland owed the property as collateral after failing to repay a 2018 loan taken out by Lisa Marie Presley, Elvis’ only child.
Actress Danielle Riley Keough, who goes by Riley, became the owner of the Memphis property after her mother’s death in January 2023. She alleged in a lawsuit earlier this month that Naussany Investments not only forged documents, but doesn’t actually exist.
The 61-page complaint says that in September 2023, the company “presented documents purporting to show that Lisa Marie Presley had borrowed $3.8 million from Naussany Investments and gave a deed of trust encumbering Graceland as security.”
But Keough says Presley never borrowed money from or gave a deed of trust — for Graceland or any other property — to Naussany Investments, alleging “these documents are fraudulent.” Moreover, the lawsuit argues that Naussany Investments “is not a real entity” at all.
“Naussany Investments & Private Lending LLC appears to be a false entity created for the purpose of defrauding the Promenade Trust, the heirs of Lisa Marie Presley, or any purchaser of Graceland at a non-judicial sale,” it reads.
Shelby County Chancellor JoeDae Jenkins sided with Keough after a hearing on Wednesday.
The Associated Press reports that he issued a temporary injunction to block the sale, essentially extending a restraining order he had placed on Naussany Investments last week.
Jenkins said in court that it would be prudent to delay any foreclosure sale of Graceland, given its prominence.
“The public interest is best served, particularly here in Shelby County, for Graceland is a part of this community, well loved by this community and, indeed, around the world,” Jenkins said, according to NBC News.
The 14-acre compound is a popular tourist destination as well as the final resting place of several of Keough’s family members, including Elvis and his parents, as well as her own mother and brother.
Jenkins also said that Keough will likely succeed in her lawsuit, “provided that you prove the fraud that has been alleged.”
Keough was not present on Wednesday, and her lawyers declined to comment on ongoing litigation. Naussany Investments did not have representation in court, according to multiple media outlets.
Elvis Presley Enterprises (EPE), the company that manages the late singer’s estate, told NPR via email that “there will be no foreclosure.”
“As the court has now made clear, there was no validity to the claims,” it said. “Graceland will continue to operate as it has for the past 42 years, ensuring that Elvis fans from around the world can continue to have a best in class experience when visiting his iconic home.”
Keough is accusing the company of forging documents
Riley Keough, pictured at the Met Gala earlier this month, is fighting a foreclosure sale of Graceland.
Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images
hide caption
toggle caption
Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images
Riley Keough, pictured at the Met Gala earlier this month, is fighting a foreclosure sale of Graceland.
Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images
The lawsuit names as defendants both the LLC and Kurt Naussany, whom it says has acted on the company’s behalf by sending Keough’s lawyers “numerous emails seeking to collect the purported $3.8 million debt and threatening to conduct a non-judicial sale of Graceland.”
Emails NPR sent to several addresses linked to the company have not been returned, and a Naussany phone number listed in the legal filing is out of service.
Adding to the intrigue, Kurt Naussany told NBC News via email that “he left the firm in 2015 and should not be named in the filing” — though one of the exhibits attached to the complaint shows a signed email he purportedly sent in 2023.
A lawyer for Keough told NPR he could not comment on pending litigation. EPE said in an emailed statement that any outside claims to the Graceland property “are fraudulent.”
“There is no foreclosure sale,” it said. “Simply put, the counter lawsuit [that] has been filed is to stop the fraud.”
Priscilla Presley — Elvis’ ex-wife and Lisa Marie’s mother — also refuted claims of a foreclosure sale on her social media accounts on Monday. She shared a picture of the front of the Graceland mansion, covered by animated red text reading: “It’s a scam!”
The lawsuit alleges that the documents purporting to show the loan and deed of trust at issue are “forgeries.”
“While the documents bear signatures that look like the signatures of Lisa Marie Presley, Lisa Marie Presley did not in fact sign the documents,” it says.
And it points to two clues that further suggest they are fake.
The documents were supposedly acknowledged before a notary public — an officer appointed by the state to witness such transactions — named Kimberly Philbrick in Duval County, Fla., in May 2018, according to the lawsuit.
The notarial acknowledgment on one of the documents includes language saying it was acknowledged before the notary “by means of ( ) physical presence or ( ) online notarization,” with the option to check either. But online notarization — and therefore, the language mentioning it — wasn’t authorized in Florida until 2020.
Secondly, Philbrick herself says she did not notarize either of the documents. She swore as much in an affidavit signed earlier this month, which was submitted alongside the complaint.
“I have never met Lisa Marie Presley, nor have I ever notarized a document signed by Lisa Marie Presley,” she wrote. “I do not know why my signature appears on this document.”
Another attachment shows Naussany Investment’s notice of the foreclosure sale, published online on May 12, on the grounds that the loan using Graceland as collateral was not repaid.
It said it would hold public auction outside the Shelby County Courthouse at 11 a.m. on May 23, and sell the property to the “highest and best bidder for cash.”
Keough, arguing that the company has “no right whatsoever” to conduct the sale, asked the court to issue an injunction permanently blocking the sale and declare that the note and deed of trust are fraudulent (and therefore unenforceable).
Last week, the judge issued a restraining order that prohibits the company, defendant Kurt Naussany “or any party acting in concert with either of them” from conducting a sale ahead of Wednesday’s hearing.
Elvis’ home base is now a major tourist draw
Visitors line up to enter the Graceland mansion in 2017, 40 years after Elvis’ death.
Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
hide caption
toggle caption
Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
Visitors line up to enter the Graceland mansion in 2017, 40 years after Elvis’ death.
Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
Graceland started as part of a cattle farm. Elvis bought the grounds and existing mansion for $102,500 in March 1957. Its worth was estimated between $400 million and $500 million as of 2020.
Elvis moved in later in 1957, after he finished filming “Jailhouse Rock.” He would go on to expand the mansion to 17,552 square feet, adding fixtures like the kidney-shaped swimming pool and sheet music-styled gates.
Graceland remained his home base for the next two decades, until he died there in August 1977.
The estate then went to Elvis’ dad, Vernon Presley, and subsequently to Lisa Marie upon her 25th birthday in 1993. Keough officially became the owner in August 2023, after a months-long legal dispute with her grandmother over her mother’s will.
Graceland has been open to the public since 1982, and has expanded over the years to include a hotel, several museums, restaurants and an entertainment complex, among other attractions.
It employs hundreds of workers and draws upwards of 500,000 visitors annually, according to the venue, which calls itself the “most famous home in America after the White House.”
Graceland joined the National Register of Historic Places in 1991, and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2006, becoming the first rock-n-roll site to be named to both lists.
The Kennedy Center, the facade of which remains covered with a tarp, is seen in Washington, DC, on June 28, 2026. A US federal judge asked on June 24 for an explanation for why a tarpaulin continues to cover the facade of the Kennedy Center where President Donald Trump’s name was recently removed. District Judge Christopher Cooper gave the board of trustees of the performing arts venue until the end of July to explain “the purpose for and status of the tarp and scaffolding that Defendants have erected on the front portico of the Center.”
ALEX WROBLEWSKI/AFP via Getty Images
hide caption
toggle caption
ALEX WROBLEWSKI/AFP via Getty Images
More than two weeks ago, President Trump’s name was removed from the Kennedy Center facade though it is still covered by a tarp and the legal battle continues.
On Monday, a U.S. Department of Justice filing on behalf of the Kennedy Center included some surprises. The document was submitted in response to issues raised by lawyers for ex-officio board member Rep. Joyce Beatty of Ohio who is suing to remove President Trump’s name from the center and stop its closure for renovations.
Among the revelations, the Kennedy Center admitted that, during a board meeting on December 18, 2025, Beatty had been “muted and prevented from speaking.” It was at that meeting that the board voted to add President Trump’s name to the center. The filing later acknowledges the congresswoman was “prevented from voicing her opposition.”
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is a living memorial to its namesake. The guidelines for how the theatre complex spends federal dollars are very specific. Among other rules, it states that “no additional memorials or plaques shall be designated or installed.” Beatty argues adding Trump’s name runs afoul of those rules and that any change requires approval from Congress.
According to one of Beatty’s filings, “There was no advance notice in the agenda that the Board would be considering a name change,” a statement the Kennedy Center now does not deny. The center admits that, prior to voting, there was “no discussion about potential risks or downsides of the vote to adopt a secondary name for the Center.” Nor was there a board discussion “about any potential conflict of interest that might result from the vote.”
The center’s lawyers previously contended that if Trump’s name were to be removed, it would “lose money from donors who support” him and “impede the Center’s fundraising efforts.”
Closing for renovations
Earlier this year, Trump announced on social media that the Kennedy Center would close for two years for renovations. He wrote that he made the decision after “a one year review” with “Contractors, Musical Experts, Art Institutions, and other Advisors and Consultants.”
But, according to the center’s lawyers, Trump’s announcement “was made without presenting any plans, analyses, timelines, or funding information to his cotrustees and without any Board vote.”
The Kennedy Center has long denied reporting by The Washington Post that ticket sales plummeted after President Trump became the Center’s board chair. In Monday’s legal filing, the Center admits that, by October 2025, “nearly half of the Center’s tickets were going unsold.”
Paul Tremblay has made a career of pushing the horror genre – and the novel format – in strange and exciting new directions.
In his latest, Dead but Dreaming of Electric Sheep, the author offers an amalgamation of genre elements that can be best described as psychological-dystopian-science-fiction horror. It’s a mouthful, but the narrative does all of that and more in a way that defies categorization.
Julia Flang is a former semiprofessional gamer working two mediocre jobs she dislikes and living in a modest ranch house in a San Fernando Valley suburb with her retired uncle, whom she calls Uncle Fun. Julia likes movies and gaming but there’s little else going on in her life, so when her estranged mother, the CFO of a large tech company, contacts her with a possible job offer – a “once-in-a-lifetime thing” that pays handsomely just for doing the interview – she hesitantly agrees.
The job is relatively simple and perfect for someone with gaming skills: using a controller built into a phone to get a man, who is stuck in a vegetative state, from California to the East Coast. It will require her to learn how to control his body – walking, moving, sitting, standing, using his arms – so she can maneuver him out of the facility where he is located and into cars and planes and through crowded airports. A fan of movies, Julia decides to call the man Bernie – after the movie Weekend at Bernie’s. When the ethics of the job start to bother her, Julia realizes it’s too late and she must go through with it. However, she’s soon contacted by people interested in sabotaging the whole thing, people who, like her, don’t align with the shady interests of conglomerates and those set to make “gobs of money” from this new, somewhat inhuman technology.
As with every Tremblay novel, any synopsis barely scratches the surface. The novel’s chapters alternate between Julia and you (yes, you). Julia’s chapters are “normal” in the sense that they obey a chronological order and have action, basic descriptions of movement and places, and dialogue. The chapters in second person are like fever dreams from a shadow world; the desperate experiences of a man trapped inside his own body with no control of it, no clue what’s happening to him, and only a few fragmented memories of his life. Also, Tremblay uses a similarly fragmented style of storytelling (including words and sentences trapped in boxes and/or “moving” on the page) to keep things interesting but also confusing and creepy.
This novel operates on several different levels and – planes of existence? Bernie has a head full of AI that controls his body, but his consciousness is still there and struggling to regain control, struggling to remember things. There are monsters, leeches, mysterious rabbits, and eerie shadows in his world, but the true horror comes from the lack of control, from being moved around against his will and having no clue what comes next. Bernie is the embodiment of losing control to AI, and when taken together with the commentary of creativity and AI and the meta interludes in which the author takes a wrecking ball to the fourth wall and addresses readers, this is the best anti-Generative AI story horror has produced so far.
Despite the horror of it, this is a very funny novel. Julia is sarcastic and struggles to keep her comebacks in line, but the conversations she has and messages she writes are always entertaining. However, the humor is far from the crown jewel here. That title belongs to a plethora of big ideas Tremblay juggles. The nature of life, death, and consciousness, the evils of conglomerates, inhuman practices in the name of capitalism, and AI, and even what it means to be human are all explored here: “Is Bernie alive? Is he feeling pain? Is he experiencing everything as a prisoner looking through the bars of his body? Has his consciousness been winnowed to a metaphysical keyhole? Where does consciousness begin or end?” There are no definite answers here, but the way Tremblay infuses humanity, love, the importance of relationships, and humor throughout the narrative provides the kind of answers that can’t and don’t need to be spelled out.
A genre-bender full of big ideas that constantly switches between a world full of real or uncomfortably plausible nightmares and a bizarre hellscape in which loss of self, memory, and autonomy are only the tip of the proverbial iceberg, Dead but Dreaming of Electric Sheep is a horrific and terrifyingly disorienting novel that invites readers to consider a future that already started. Tremblay has always been an innovator, but this beautifully written collection of real and imagined grotesqueries cements him not only as one of the most original and exciting voices in horror but also as one of the smartest, most engaging authors in contemporary fiction.
Gabino Iglesias is an author, book reviewer and professor living in Austin, Texas. Find him on X, formerly Twitter, at @Gabino_Iglesias.
-
Oklahoma35 seconds agoOklahoma Lottery Mega Millions, Pick 3 results for June 30, 2026
-
Oregon8 minutes agoWhat the Supreme Court’s transgender sports ruling means for Oregon
-
Pennsylvania11 minutes ago10-year-old stabbed Dollar Tree employee during robbery in Pennsylvania, police say
-
Rhode Island16 minutes agoThree generations killed during driving lesson after car plunges into river
-
South-Carolina23 minutes agoSouth Carolina Lottery Mega Millions, Pick 3 results for June 30, 2026
-
South Dakota26 minutes agoVermillion’s Reuvers commits to South Dakota
-
Tennessee31 minutes agoTennessee’s heat wave flirting with records
-
Texas38 minutes agoPhoenix Merchant Partners and Texas Capital Alternative Asset Management Form Strategic Relationship
