The email sent by an alleged dark web ringleader and identity thief to the New York Times, the unknown writer claimed he was behind the mysterious attempted foreclosure auction of Graceland.
An email sent on behalf of a company seeking to foreclose on the former estate of Elvis Presley known as Graceland has been linked to Nigeria.
The email sent by an alleged dark web ringleader and identity thief to the New York Times, the unknown writer claimed he was behind the mysterious attempted foreclosure auction of Graceland.
The writer said their job is to figure out how to steal.
“We figure out how to steal,” the writer said. “That’s what we do.”
“I had fun figuring this one out and it didn’t succeed very well,” the person who replied to emailed questions from The New York Times about the attempted sale of Graceland, said.
The writer identified himself as an identity thief — a ring leader on the dark web, with a network of “worms” placed throughout the United States.
He said his ring preyed on the dead, the unsuspecting and the elderly, adding that they especially targeted those from Florida and California.
According to the writer, the ring uses birth certificates and other documents to discover personal information to aid the scams.
The group’s latest target was the estate of Lisa Marie Presley, he said. In January 2023, Lisa Marie Presley’s daughter, Riley Keough was named the heir to the estate after her mother’s death.
Months later, a mysterious company, Naussany Investments & Private Lending LLC presented documents claiming it had loaned Lisa Marie $3.8 million and that she used the house as collateral.
Last week, there was a Threat that Graceland was about to be foreclosed on and sold by the company, which took an ad to notify the public of its plans to auction the estate in a foreclosure sale.
Keough filed a lawsuit alleging that the mysterious company used “fraudulent” documents to stake a claim on the property.
Keough’s attorneys argued that Elvis’ daughter never took out the loan. They also described the company as a fraudulent entity.
It added that Keough “did not give a deed of trust to Graceland” or any other property to the mysterious company.
The attorneys noted that the documents “bear signatures that look like the signatures of Lisa Marie Presley,” but added in the lawsuit that “Lisa Marie Presley did not in fact sign the documents”.
A judge in Tennessee subsequently blocked the foreclosure sale of the Graceland compound, following the suit filed by Elvis Presley’s granddaughter to stop it.
The New York Times noted that media outlets often receive unsolicited emails from people who make outlandish claims. It, however, added that the email arrived Friday in response to one sent by The Times to an email address that Naussany listed in a legal filing sent to a Tennessee court reviewing the foreclosure case.
The writer told The Times that he was based in Nigeria and his email was written in Luganda, a Bantu language spoken in Uganda.
However, the filing with the email address was faxed from a toll-free number designed to serve North America.
It was included in documents sent to the Chancery Court in Shelby County, Tenn., where the foreclosure case is still pending.