Oct. 23--Troubled Brooke Corp. and its subsidiaries have run into additional trouble, with two more banks suing over unpaid loans and Brooke's special master firing 52 more employees.

In a regulatory filing this week, Brooke subsidiary Aleritas Capital Corp. reported that DZ Bank AG, a large German bank, had accelerated an August 2006 loan after Aleritas missed interest payments. The bank is seeking $34.13 million.

And on Monday, Citizens Bank & Trust Co. of Chillicothe, Mo., sued Brooke over a $9 million loan secured by stock in Brooke subsidiary First Life America Corp., a life insurance company based in Topeka. The bank said that Brooke had defaulted on the loan and owed it $9.5 million in principal, interest and fees.

The Kansas Insurance Department on Friday approved the sale of First Life America to a Tulsa, Okla., insurance company, First Trinity Financial Corp. The sale was negotiated before Albert Riederer, a former Jackson County prosecutor and appeals court judge, was appointed by a federal judge in September as special master to administer Brooke's finances.

Riederer on Tuesday laid off 52 employees at Brooke's offices in Phillipsburg, Kan., bringing to more than 100 the number of employees there who have lost their jobs since Riederer was appointed last month. Brooke now has 57 employees left in Phillipsburg.

Riederer got rid of 10 other employees recently at Brooke's Overland Park headquarters on College Boulevard.

"We'll probably get down a little more in Phillipsburg," Riederer said in a phone interview Wednesday. "That will give us the right amount of people to carry forward for a while and get our expenses more in line."

Brooke and Aleritas are part of a financial services lending and franchising enterprise founded by Robert Orr in 1986.

The Brooke companies bought independent insurance agencies and other businesses from their owners with Aleritas funds and repackaged them as Brooke agency franchises sold to entrepreneurs using money borrowed from Aleritas. The Brooke companies also repackaged and resold the loans as securities to Wall Street investors and to groups of mostly small Midwestern banks.

Orr resigned as chairman of Brooke on Sept. 17 and as a director of Brooke and all of its subsidiaries on Oct. 15. Also resigning recently as directors of Brooke were John L. Allen, Joe L. Barnes and Mitchell G. Holthus, the last better known as the play-by-play announcer for the Kansas City Chiefs.

Brooke's board now has only one director, David D.