Actor Riley Keough, the granddaughter of Elvis Presley and heir to the Presley family trust, has filed a lawsuit to prevent Graceland from being sold at public auction.
The auction had been set to be held on Thursday, but a judge in Memphis, Tennessee, granted Keough, the sole trustee of Promenade Trust — which manages Graceland — a temporary restraining order as her lawsuit moves forward.
Naussany Investments and Private Lending, the company seeking to auction off Graceland, claimed that Keough’s mother, Lisa Marie Presley, had borrowed $3.8 million and put the property up as collateral. A public notice that Graceland was to be auctioned had gone out to local media on Sunday, The Guardian reported. The notice reportedly cited an unpaid loan from 2018.
Keough’s complaint alleges that the documents of the purported loan, including those bearing Lisa Marie Presley’s signature, are fake. It also claims that Naussany Investments and Private Lending “is not a real entity” and that it was created “for the purpose of defrauding the Promenade Trust, the heirs of Lisa Marie Presley, or any other purchaser of Graceland at a non-judicial sale.”
Keough is seeking to have the deed of trust be declared “fraudulent, void and unenforceable.”
Naussany Investments did not respond to NBC News’ request for comment, and Kurt Naussany, who is named in the suit as a defendant and a representative of the company, told NBC News that he left the firm in 2015 and should not be named in the complaint.
Elvis Presley lived in the Memphis estate from 1957 until his death on the property 20 years later. He is buried at Graceland alongside other family members, including Keough’s brother, Benjamin Keough, who died by suicide in 2020.
After several bouts of financial trouble, executors of Presley’s estate, including his ex-wife, Priscilla Presley, opened Graceland to the public in 1982. Lisa Marie Presley assumed full control of the trust when she turned 25. Keough inherited the trust after her mother died suddenly last year.
Graceland is one of the most-visited home tours in the country, with 500,000 visitors every year, its website says. It also claims that the property is the most famous home in the U.S. after the White House.
