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Michael Jackson's famed Neverland Valley Ranch in California will be foreclosed and sold on March 19 unless the pop star pays a balance of nearly US$25 million ($30.07 million), property records show.
Celebrity columnist Roger Friedman reported on www.foxnews.com that Jackson has been apprised of the foreclosure and that legal documents have also been filed with the Santa Barbara County Recorder's office.
"You are in default of a deed of trust," Jackson was told in the five-page filing, according to a copy of the document published on the website. "Unless you take action to protect your property it may be sold at a public sale." According to the documents, if Jackson fails to pay the outstanding balance of US$24.5 million, Neverland would be sold to the highest bidder at a public auction on the courthouse steps.
The county recorder's website shows that a Notice of Trustees Sale was filed against Neverland Valley Ranch this week but no further details were available.
Jackson's publicist, Raymone Bain, did not comment.
The one-time "King of Pop" has owned the 1133ha ranch in the rolling foothills above the California coast since 1988, naming it after the whimsical island where children never grow up in J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan stories. Jackson, 49, famously outfitted the property with a private zoo and amusement park and festooned it with statues of Peter Pan characters.
But the reclusive, Grammy-winning singer has spent little time at Neverland since his June, 2005 acquittal on charges that he sexually molested a young boy there after plying him with alcohol.
In 2006 state authorities ordered the property shuttered and fined Jackson for failing to pay his employees or maintain proper insurance, and the zoo animals have since reportedly been removed.
Jackson, who scored one of the top-selling pop albums of all time with Thriller, has since seen his fame as an entertainer eclipsed by the sometimes bizarre details of his personal life.
- REUTERS
