LAURENS, S.C. (AP) - A former Carolina Investors vice president pleaded guilty Monday to her role in one of the biggest bankruptcies in South Carolina history.

Anne Owen pleaded guilty to all eight counts of security fraud in a Laurens County courtroom. She had been scheduled to go on trial in three weeks.

Attorney General Henry McMaster said Owen has agreed to help prosecutors in the case and will be sentenced in October.

"Any help is very important," McMaster said. "This is a complex white-collar investigation."

Owen decided to plead guilty because "she's recognized she has some responsibility to investors," Jim Bannister, her lawyer, said. "These were people she knew. They were her friends."

Owen's husband and former Carolina Investors president and chief executive Larry Owen was sentenced in March to eight years in prison for misleading investors. He pleaded guilty four days into his trail last July. He will be eligible for parole in a little more than a year.

Former Carolina Investors chairman Earle Morris Jr. was convicted of similar charges last fall. Morris is a former state legislator, lieutenant governor and comptroller general. He was sentenced to slightly less than four years in prison and is appealing his conviction.

Anne Owen was indicted in April 2004 on eight counts of securities fraud.

Prosecutors said she lied to investors about the financial well-being of Carolina Investors. More than 8,000 investors lost about $278 million when the Upstate company went under in the spring of 2003 when its parent company, Columbia-based HomeGold, was deeply in debt.

HomeGold was a finance company that specialized in originating, selling and servicing high-risk residential mortgages. Its business was funded through loans from Carolina Investors, which sold unsecured notes and debentures, according to Securities and Exchange Commission documents.

The market for high-risk mortgages crashed in 1998. By 2002, HomeGold owed more to Carolina Investors' depositors than the company was worth, prosecutors said.

Morris and Larry Owen were accused of hiding the company's pending insolvency and persuading investors to leave their money in the business or, in some cases, to invest more in the failing enterprise.

A civil settlement with Carolina Investors returned about 18 cents for each dollar people put into the company.