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Uh-oh, this is not good news for local eCommerce company Digital River: Digital River shareholder suit alleges backdating.

Digital River was one of nine firms Glass Lewis cited recently as having a pattern of both being late to file stock-option grant reports and having a material rise in their stock price in the time between the purported grant date and the date of the SEC filing....

The suit alleges that a statistical analysis showed a 99.5 percent likelihood that the pattern of stock-option grants being followed by stock-price increases was not the result of random good luck, thus suggesting that backdating occurred....

For example, in 2001 one set of options was dated Jan. 2, at $2.59, the stock's low that year. Immediately after, the stock spiked to as high as $8.75 before settling back to $5.125, when another 1,390,000 shares were granted to different executives. The stock rose a couple of dollars after that, before settling in the $4-to-$5 range for several months. By December, the stock traded as high as $19.60.