California Home Loan 360

Homeowners who owe more than their property is worth are offered new terms. Jared Lanning, struggling to pay a home loan on which he owed more than his house was worth, was thinking he might just let the lender take back the property. Then he got a call one evening from an Orange County investor who had bought his mortgage.

A British firm holding county funds is forced into receivership. The Orange County treasury is struggling to recover an $80-million investment in a complex British fund that was forced into receivership last month after it defaulted on payments to creditors, the county treasurer told the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday.

The investment in England-based Whistlejacket is a small portion of Orange County's overall portfolio, but the once-bankrupt county remains gun-shy about financial risk. Orange County's latest investments in complex financial deals took a turn for the worse Wednesday when a fund in which the county placed $80 million neared default after a major U.K. bank aborted plans for a bailout.

Costs are quickly mounting in Orange County's effort to invalidate its pension agreement with sheriff's deputies, public records show.

Although the amount is small, the actions reflect continuing unease with Treasurer Chriss Street's financial stewardship. Four of the seven public agencies that voluntarily participate in Orange County's investment portfolio have withdrawn almost all their cash in recent months amid concerns over Treasurer Chriss Street, and others are reviewing whether to keep their money in the pool, according to public finance managers.

The man who called attention to county's shaky investments now is defending his own. In 1994, Chriss Street was hailed as a hero for helping to blow the whistle on high-risk holdings in Orange County's investment portfolio, presaging the largest municipal bankruptcy filing in U.S. history.

The debt securities under scrutiny in Orange County's investment pool were issued by so-called structured investment vehicles, or SIVs -- typically bank-managed funds that borrow using short-term IOUs to buy longer-term assets, such as bonds backed by mortgages or credit card debt.

Orange County officials said Tuesday that the county's short-term investment pools held about 14% of assets in a type of IOU that some big investors had been shunning because of credit-quality concerns.

Officials say he took money for home repairs but disappeared without performing the work. Orange County authorities Friday were looking for dozens of people who may have been scammed by a man accused of posing as a contractor and taking homeowners' money before abandoning the jobs.

IRVINE, Calif. -- After more than two decades in the mortgage business, Tony Ventimiglio got his big break in 2001 when he accepted a managerial job with a lender here in the heart of Orange County for $225,000 a year -- more than double what he had made in each of the previous four years.