Kansas City, Kan. ? A shareholder lawsuit accuses a Kansas City, Kan., company of changing the dates on which it awarded executive stock options to maximize their returns and then attempting to cover it up.

The Alaska Electrical Pension Fund filed the lawsuit this week in Kansas City, Kan., federal court against Epiq Systems Inc., which provides technology-based services to the legal industry.

The suit alleges the company has been backdating stock options going back to 1997 and filed false reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

“Plaintiff’s investigation has revealed that Epiq has secretly backdated millions of options to its top officers and directors for nearly a decade, reporting false financial statements and issuing false proxies to shareholders,” the lawsuit said, adding that the average management return between 1996 and 2007 was 400 percent higher than the average public investor.

The pension fund has filed similar claims across the country. It said that it analyzed Epiq’s securities filings and found that “with highly improbable frequency” the grant of options to executives and directors consistently were priced at the lowest closing price or intraday trade for the month, quarter or year.

“Indeed, the odds that Epiq priced certain of its options by chance (rather than manipulation) are well over 1 in 1,000,000,” the lawsuit stated.