An Education Department official who oversees the federal guaranteed-student-loan program held at least $100,000 worth of stock in a student-loan company that is under investigation by New York’s attorney general, Higher Ed Watch, a blog of the New America Foundation, reported this afternoon.

The department official, Matteo Fontana, held at least 10,500 shares in Student Loan Xpress as of September 2003, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing by the Education Lending Group, the lender’s former owner. Mr. Fontana is a close friend of Fabrizio (Breeze) Balestri, president of Student Loan Xpress, the blog reported.

The Education Department released a statement this evening that said: “The department takes this matter very seriously, and our Office of the General Counsel is actively reviewing it.”

The blog is written by Stephen Burd, a former senior writer for The Chronicle.

News of the stock holding came one day after the New York attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo, sent letters to two colleges, and a subpoena to a third, seeking information about employees who had held stock in the Education Lending Group. All three colleges put Student Loan XPress on their preferred-lender lists, which students often follow in deciding where to get their loans.

In Mr. Fontana’s case, the concern is not that he might have steered borrowers to particular lenders. Rather, it is that he might have allowed Student Loan XPress to mine the National Student Loan Data System for information about individual borrowers and their student loans. The company could then have used the information to try to lure borrowers away from the department’s direct-loan program by offering them consolidation loans. —Kelly Field