Heavy Priscilla Presley has sued four associates, accusing them of elder abuse and financial fraud.
Actress and pop culture icon Priscilla Presley believes she’s the victim of elder abuse. On July 18, 2024, the Hallmark Channel alum sued several former business associates for $1 million, claiming they gained her trust and tried to “drain her of every last penny she had,” as first reported by TMZ.
Marty Singer, a lawyer for Presley, filed the suit in Los Angeles Superior Court, according to USA Today, against four of Presley’s past business partners, including auctioneer Brigitte Kruse, citing 12 different complaints, including financial elder abuse.
According to the outlet, Presley, who was famously married to music legend Elvis Presley, has asked the court to keep the defendants from accessing her finances moving forward in addition to paying $1 million in damages.
Priscilla Presley Claims 4 Associates Took Control of Her Finances After Convincing Her They’d ‘Take Care of Her’
GettyAustin Butler, who played Elvis Presley in “Elvis,” and Priscilla Presley at the 2022 Met Gala
Presley’s lawsuit alleges, according to Us Weekly, that former associates Brigitte Kruse, Kevin Fialko, Vahe Sislyan and Lynn Walker Wright “meticulously planned” to take advantage of “an older woman by gaining her trust, isolating her from the most important people in her life, and duping her into believing that they would take care of her.”
TMZ reported that the suit accuses Kruse of convincing Presley that her past financial advisors were either “deceitful or incompetent,” and to partner with her, Fialko, Sislyan and Wright. They then tricked her, per TMZ’s review of the court documents, into signing new contracts, forming new companies, and letting those new associates receive 80% of her income.Presley was left with minority shares in the companies they created using her name, image and likeness, TMZ said the suit claims. That includes the 2023 release of “Priscilla,” the Sofia Coppola-directed biopic, for which Presley claims her share of profits were “misappropriated,” per TMZ.
Us Weekly reported that the lawsuit claims that, over two years time, the group obtained “power of attorney, control over her family and personal trusts, and control over her bank accounts.” In February, the outlet said, Kruse and Fialko sued Presley for breach of contract.
Priscilla Presley Calls Celebrity Memorabilia Auctioneer Brigitte Kruse a ‘Pathological Liar’
Presley’s lawsuit is particularly accusatory toward Kruse, per TMZ. A widely-known auctioneer of celebrity memorabilia, according to her LinkedIn profile, was the first woman auctioneer published in the Guinness Book of World Records, in 2016, for conducting the “Largest Abandoned Personal Property Auction in World History.”
Her profile lists her most recent role as
In the lawsuit, Presley, who starred in Hallmark’s “Wedding at Graceland” and “Christmas at Graceland: Home for the Holidays,” said the two met in 2021 when Kruse sold Elvis memorabilia through her auction house, per TMZ.
Presley called Kruse a “con artist and pathological liar” in court documents, per Us Weekly, claiming she aimed to take control of Presley’s finances and forced her into “a form of indentured servitude.” The lawsuit explained Presley would work but her associates would “receive the lion’s share of any revenue that she was able to earn in the future.”
On the afternoon of July 18, Kruse’s legal team issued a statement to TMZ that said, “We cannot respond because counsel has not been served with a copy of the lawsuit. We have alerted Ms. Presley’s attorneys that we do not have a copy of this filing but they have not responded.”