Lisa Marie Presley lawsuit a lawsuit against her former business manager, alleging that she’s lost millions of dollars as the result of his mishandling her assets.
In the suit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, the daughter of deceased music legend Elvis Presley says that, in 2005, due largely to her ownership in Elvis Presley Enterprises, she held assets in trust worth more than $100 million. Over the next 11 years, the suit says, the “reckless and negligent mismanagement, and self-serving ambition” of trustee Barry J. Siegel left her millions of dollars in debt.
As reported earlier by TheWrap, Presley filed court papers earlier this month saying that she is more than $16 million in debt.
According to the suit, Siegel placed Presley’s assets in “a risky and undiversified venture, in the hope of attaining his own celebrity in the entertainment industry.”
For instance, the suit says, in 2005 Siegel sold off 85 percent of her interest in Elvis Presley Enterprises and invested the money in the holding company of “American Idol” and “thus align himself with famed investor Robert F.X. Sillerman.”
However, the suit says, in 2016, Sillerman’s company went bankrupt, putting Presley at a loss of more than $24.5 million, and by 2014, “Siegel had liquidated almost all of the Trust’s remaining principal. The Trust was left with $14,000 in cash and over $500,000 in credit card debt.”
The suit alleges breach of fiduciary duty, negligence, constructive fraud and other counts.
Siegel has not yet responded to TheWrap’s request for comment. However, according to TMZ, he has filed his own lawsuit saying that Presley “refused to listen to the warnings of her most trusted advisers and her family. Unfortunately, she now has only herself to blame for her financial and personal misfortunes.”
Pamela Chelin contributed to this report.