Series of Backstage Dramas Jolt TV Shopping Channel : Business: Allegations of blackmail, bribery and mob ties are swirling around the Home Shopping Network.

On the Home Shopping Network, the story lines are as thin as an overworked credit card.

About the only drama unfolding amid the endless parade of cut-rate merchandise offered to cable television viewers is whether perky hostess Erin Morrissey’s enthusiasm will give out before the supply of pink cubic zirconia bracelets at $29.75 each.

But from behind the scenes of the $1-billion-a-year merchant-of-the-air have come details of a continuing drama that sounds improbable even by TV movie standards.

In a bizarre series of lawsuits and published reports, current and former executives of HSN have traded allegations of blackmail, bribery, kickbacks and misuse of company funds. A federal grand jury in Tampa, Fla., is investigating.

Even the Gambino crime family figures in the uproar--in a lawsuit filed by a former HSN general counsel who charged that mob boss John Gotti had once offered “to take care of a problem” an HSN consultant was having with a one-time business partner.

Says Dade County Circuit Judge Amy Steele Donner, who presided over a bitter Miami divorce case that helped spark the grand jury probe:

“I’ve handled a lot of cases involving more money, but never one where agents of the FBI, the IRS and the U.S. attorney’s office sat in on a dissolution of marriage. This case is unique.”

The most immediate effect of burgeoning scandal is the decision this week by Liberty Media Corp. to withdraw its $640-million offer to buy complete control of HSN, which is based in Clearwater, Fla.

Liberty Media--itself controlled by John Malone, chief executive of cable television giant Tele-Communications Inc.--already had voting control of HSN stock and owns a major stake in the other major cable TV merchant, QVC Network Inc.

Analysts had speculated that Liberty Media eventually would merge the two networks into a $2-billion-a-year mega-retailer, then use them as the base for an expanded array of home shopping services and programs.

Moreover, the technology behind the shopping channels could be harnessed for more exotic uses, such as pay-per-view entertainment programming. HSN, for example, has one of the most advanced telephone-answering systems in the retailing business.

Fueling speculation that Malone and his partners have bigger plans for HSN is the involvement of Barry Diller, the former chairman of 20th Century-Fox Film Corp.

The ex-studio chief last year bought a 3% stake in QVC, and he has talked of plans to use the channel as an entry into interactive TV and the broader boom in cable TV programming that is expected to revolutionize home entertainment in this decade.

The withdrawal of the Liberty Media offer, and the Tampa grand jury’s inquiry into allegations involving HSN’s multimillionaire co-founders, Chairman Roy Speer and former president Lowell Paxson, do at least cloud the network’s immediate plans.

Not surprisingly, HSN’s stock was clobbered as the charges and countercharges surfaced. And over the past week, it was further hurt when the company announced an unexpectedly large second-quarter loss of $26.9 million.

The company’s stock price slid Thursday to $4.86 in New York Stock Exchange trading, from a peak this year of $8.75.

Nor is the financial hit the first taken by HSN. The company was one of the highest-flying stocks of the 1980s, once trading as high as $47 a share. But HSN never earned the giant profits that some Wall Street analysts had forecast.

On Thursday, concerns about the depth of HSN’s financial problems prompted some lenders to stop providing credit to apparel makers that ship merchandise to the cable channel.

Allegations of misuse of HSN funds first surfaced in a divorce proceeding between two former company executives filed in Miami last year.

Wanda Rayle DiFilippo, a former production vice president, charged that her husband of three years, former HSN general counsel Fernando DiFilippo, extorted $12 million from Speer and Paxson in exchange for withholding a threatened lawsuit accusing them of financial chicanery. The suit, she claimed, would have alleged that under Speer and Paxson, HSN overpaid vendors for merchandise, purportedly in exchange for kickbacks.

Contending that those millions were earned during their marriage--and thus were joint property--Wanda DiFilippo asked for half of the money.

Fernando DiFilippo, who resigned from the company in 1990 and now runs an upscale Italian restaurant in Miami, agrees that he was paid stock then valued at $12 million. But in an interview this week, he insisted that the stock payment was for services rendered.

Of his former wife’s allegations, he said: “That’s her $6-million charge, and it’s (b.s.).” Speer and Paxson also deny Wanda DiFilippo’s allegations. A committee of the firm’s board is looking into HSN’s dealings with vendors.

For his part, Fernando DiFilippo alleged that his ex-wife took confidential documents from his home. In approving the couple’s confidential divorce settlement on April 2, Donner agreed that the documents were DiFilippo’s and ordered them returned.

But on Thursday, copies that had been made by Wanda DiFilippo’s attorney and put under seal by Donner were shipped to the grand jury in Tampa. Fernando DiFilippo acknowledged this week that he has been called to testify before the grand jury.

The allegations of mob ties to HSN personnel were leveled in a separate lawsuit filed in Tampa this month by Fernando DiFilippo’s successor as general counsel, Allen P. Allweiss.

Allweiss charged that a longtime consultant to HSN, Francis Santangelo, was a member of the Gambino organized crime family.

According to Allweiss’ suit, Santangelo once boasted that Gotti, the now-jailed mob boss, had offered to “take care” of a problem concerning a $1.2-million legal judgment against Santangelo. Allweiss also alleged that Speer, without company approval, had authorized HSN to lend Santangelo the money to pay off the judgment.

The former executive contends in the suit, filed after his firing in February, that he lost his job after trying to alert Liberty Media to problems at HSN.

Other pending legal actions involving the cable channel include a shareholders’ lawsuit charging Speer with diverting company funds to his son and two suits by vendors alleging the payment of kickbacks by competitors to HSN employees in order to secure the cable channel’s business.

Ultimately, according to some analysts and insiders, the investigation of Speer and other former HSN executives will serve only to drive down the price of the 75 million HSN shares that Liberty Media does not now own.

“For the company, it’s much ado about nothing,” said one former executive, speaking on condition he not be identified.

“Home Shopping shareholders may end up taking a haircut,” he said. “But it’s not going to impact Liberty or John Malone”--except, perhaps, to give them a genuine bargain when they ultimately complete the delayed stock deal.

Times staff writer John Lippman in Los Angeles contributed to this story.