Loss claims in Quality Home Loans’ collapse have surged to $332 million as a three-way fight has broken out between the bankrupt lender, its investors and Pacificor, a Santa Barbara-based hedge fund that pumped more than $40 million into the company. The latest twist in the tangled Chapter 11 bankruptcy is a $60 million complaint by investors in Agoura Hills-based Quality Home Loans. Creditors have made $272 million in claims, and the investors’ filing pushed the total tab to the $332 million mark.

Last fall, a struggle broke out between John Gaiser, Quality Home Loans’ founder, and Michael Klein, the late Pacificor chief who publicly moved to take over the mortgage firm after it declared bankruptcy in August – a deal later rejected by the trustee overseeing the company. Since then, the “hard money” lender’s operations have ceased, it has shrunk from 191 employees to 10 and three major players are fighting over the assets:

• Investors in QHL Holdings Fund Ten and Golden State TD Investments – the entities used to fund Quality Home Loans’ lending – filed a $60 million complaint against the company and Gaiser, who lives in Camarillo.

• Independent of their investors’ filing, the QHL Holdings fund and the Golden State fund claim Quality Home Loans owes them $100 million and $75 million, respectively, for their help financing the lender’s home loans.

• Pacificor has asserted that Quality Home Loans owes it $42 million for cash infusions made in the months before the lender collapsed.