Who plotted to sell Graceland? An identity thief raises his hand.

The writer said he was an identity thief – a dark web kingpin, with a network of “worms” spread across the United States.

In an email to the New York Times, he said his network preyed on the dead, the unsuspecting and the elderly, particularly those in Florida and California, using birth certificates and other documents. to discover personal information that helped them in their projects.

“We’re figuring out how to fly,” he said. “This is what we do.”

Recently, the author suggests, the group had turned its attention to a major target: the estate of Lisa Marie Presley, which last week faced a threat that Graceland was about to be seized and sold by a mysterious company, Naussany Investments & Private Lending. SARL.

The media often receives unsolicited emails from people making wild claims. But that email arrived Friday in response to one sent by the Times to an email address listed by Naussany in a legal filing sent to a Tennessee court reviewing the foreclosure case.

In its email, the Times referred to the company’s claim that Ms. Presley had borrowed $3.8 million from it, using Graceland as collateral. In the responses, from the email address to which the Times had written, the author described the foreclosure effort not as a legitimate attempt to collect a debt, but as a scam.

“I had fun figuring this one out and it didn’t turn out very well,” the email author said. He said he was based in Nigeria and his email was written in Luganda, a Bantu language spoken in Uganda. But the file with the email address was faxed from a toll-free number designed to serve North America; it was included in documents sent to Chancery Court in Shelby County, Tennessee, where the foreclosure case is still pending.

Since news broke last week that a company was trying to sell Graceland — the former home of Elvis Presley and a beloved tourist attraction in Memphis — the Naussany company has remained a lingering enigma. It is difficult to find public documents proving the existence of the company. Phone numbers listed in the company’s court documents are not in service. The addresses given by the company are those of the post offices.

In September, eight months after Ms. Presley’s death, Naussany Investments filed documents with the California probate court, showing what it said was Ms. Presley’s debt dating back to 2018. It included a trust deed, with a signature represented as that of Mrs. Presley, who put forward Graceland as collateral.

But Clint Anderson, the deputy administrator of the Shelby County Register of Deeds, said his office does not have a deed of trust or any other documents from Naussany Investments “to legitimize this company seizing any other property in the county of Shelby”.

In its September filing, Naussany Investments said it would agree to settle what it described as the debt for a discounted $2.85 million, which would be paid by the Presley family trust. But the trust, now run by Lisa Marie Presley’s daughter, actress Riley Keough, does not view the debt as legitimate.

Naussany Investments then placed an ad in The Commercial Appeal of Memphis, announcing that it planned to auction off Graceland in a foreclosure sale last week.

That landed Ms. Keough in court last week, where she fought the foreclosure, saying in a legal filing that the loan was a fiction, that the company was “a fake entity” and that the attempt to sell Graceland was a fraud. The signatures of Ms. Presley and a notary on some of the documents had been forged, Ms. Keough’s lawyers said.

At a hearing Wednesday, the judge blocked any immediate seizure of Graceland, saying he needed to review more evidence.

No representative of the Naussany company attended the hearing. But shortly before the start, the court received a filing from a person identifying himself as a representative of the company, Gregory E. Naussany. The filing disputed Ms. Keough’s allegations, requested time to present her defense and included an email address, gregoryenaussanyniplflorida@hotmail.com, for further contact.

But in the end, Naussany Investments seemed to have given up. The Commercial Appeal and Associated Press reported receiving emails from the company withdrawing its claims. Elvis Presley Enterprises, which operates Graceland as a tourist attraction, told the New York Times that an attorney for the family trust also received an email from a person claiming to be Gregory Naussany who said that Naussany Investments did had no intention of making a sale. .

However, court records do not yet show any motion by Naussany Investments to drop its claim.

A lawyer for Ms. Keough declined to comment Tuesday.

In a bizarre case with so many unanswered questions, it is difficult to determine how much weight to give to recent communications to the Times from the email address associated with Naussany Investments. Although the writer claims to be based in Nigeria, it is difficult to locate him precisely.

The Bantu language used in the two emails to the Times is clunky in places, according to a translator who reviewed the emails, while the English in court documents filed by the company is fluent.

NBC News is among several media outlets that have received other emails from people suggesting they have ties to the company, but it does not appear those emails contain any acknowledgment of misconduct.

Naussany Investments listed several email addresses in its court filings. Both emails received by The Times in recent days came from the address associated with Gregory Naussany that was listed in the company’s court filing. In each of these cases, the author advances the idea that he was part of a sophisticated identity theft operation that particularly targeted Americans, described as gullible.

When The Times asked for further clarification on specific questions, the writer responded: “You don’t have to understand. » The author suggested no reason for being so open in the emails, beyond taking credit for what he described as the ring’s success in other cases.

“I’m the one causing trouble,” the writer said, opening his first email Friday.

On Thursday, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti said his office would review Naussany Investments and investigate its attempt to seize what he said was the state’s most “beloved” home. An office spokesperson said Tuesday that officials were aware of the correspondence sent to the Times and would “continue to review the matter.”

On Friday, even before the company’s recent emails were sent, Darrell Castle, a Memphis attorney who has worked frequently on foreclosures for more than 40 years, called the entire situation “extremely unusual to the point of ‘be incredible’.

Mark A. Sunderman, a real estate professor at the University of Memphis, was struck by the audacity of such an effort, but also pointed out the vulnerability of the system.

“They chose the wrong terrain,” he said. “If it hadn’t been for such a high-profile property, they could have gotten away with it.” »

In this case, the person who took credit for the scheme in emails admitted in a mixture of Luganda and English that they had been foiled.

“Your client has nothing to fear,” the person wrote, “win her.”

Then the writer added: “She beat me at my own game.”

Musinguzi Blanche contributed reporting from Kampala, Uganda, Abdi Latif Dahir from Nairobi, Kenya, Ruth Maclean from Dakar, Senegal, Jessica Jaglois from Memphis and Aaron Krolik from New York. Kitty Bennett And Kirsten Noyes contributed to the research.