PhillyDeals: Thanksgiving weekend Web sales increase over last year

Online sales for Thanksgiving through Sunday jumped 17 percent over last year, says Fiona Dias, strategy and marketing boss at King of Prussia-based GSI Commerce, which runs Web sites for Ace Hardware, Dick's Sporting Goods, Ralph Lauren, Toys 'R Us, Zale's jewelers, and hundreds of other retailers.

The number doesn't include business from merchants who have signed on with GSI since last fall, or those who have dropped out.

It counts 100 "webstores" where "the merchant existed 13 months ago and is still in existence," and was a GSI client for at least that long, Dias told me. GSI projects gross merchandise sales through Web sites it runs at $2.5 billion this year.

" 'Cyber Monday' was significantly higher than the prior days," Dias said, though she didn't have final data. One big change: "We used to get a big spike at lunchtime. But on Monday we saw people jump online at one, two, three, four in the morning. Then we had a nice midday spike. And it kept going all the way through the night."

What's with that? "We have concluded that people have broadband [Internet] at home," plus hand-held Internet phone service, so "there's no reason to shop from the office. Though you can."

Dias called her company's data the nation's "greatest read on e-commerce sales, outside of Amazon.com, which doesn't disclose it."

Federal prosecutors yesterday charged Scott Rothstein, a high-profile Fort Lauderdale lawyer, with fraud, racketeering, and money laundering.

The government charges he duped wealthy investors - from the Main Line to Palm Beach - into giving him hundreds of millions of dollars for "bogus investments."

Among other allegations, the feds say Rothstein stashed the money in African bank accounts, and paid old investors with new investors' cash, instead of actual profits.

Rothstein's lawyer told reporters he wants to repay the money.

The Main Line connection: Clients of Radnor-based Ballamor Capital Management invested $30 million with Rothstein. This is confirmed by Ballamor's general counsel, Lawrence Rovin.

Other victims: Clients of Banyon Income Fund L.P., located in Fort Lauderdale and run by businessman George Levin, last week filed a $100-million civil complaint against Rothstein, alleging he took their money, too.

How did the smart guys who ran Banyon end up putting their clients' money into what the feds call a Ponzi scheme? How did the smart guys who run Ballamor, who include CEO Barry Bekkedam, a former Villanova basketball player who spends a lot of time in South Florida, end up putting their clients' money, partly through Banyon, into the same Ponzi scheme?

Maybe they convinced each other.

They certainly worked closely together: Earlier this year, Banyon's Levin helped finance $1.8 billion Ballamor's expansion, while Ballamor's Bekkedam urged clients to invest with Banyon.

"Ballamor needed some capital to expand our business. George agreed to provide us with capital," Ballamor's Rovin told me. "He made a $1 million investment," at market rates.

"Similarly," Rovin continued, "a number of our clients are investors in Nova Bank," of Berwyn. Nova wanted to raise capital, Bekkedam recommended the bank to Levin, and "George made a $5 million investment."

Brian Hartline, chief executive at Nova, confirmed to me that Levin had invested $5 million in the bank, and had regulators' approval to invest more. "But unfortunately he fell victim to the [Rothstein] scheme and was unable to fulfill it," Hartline said.

According to the Florida investors' civil suit against Rothstein, Levin's payments to Bekkedam and his Radnor firm amounted to payment "for their [Bekkedam's and Ballamor's] involvement in this Ponzi scheme."

But Ballamor's Rovin says the Nova and Ballamor investments "were not linked" to Bekkedam's endorsement of Levin's fund. "There was no quid pro quo."

What, then, did Bekkedam and his firm get from guiding investors to Levin's Banyon fund, and the Rothstein fiasco?

"We were paid strictly on the basis of our regular management fees," said Rovin. Those run "around 1 percent a year."