New York ? They’re rich. They’re shameless. And they’ve taken the greed-is-good mantra to a whole new level.

They are the fallen corporate kings of companies like WorldCom, Tyco and Enron whose alleged excesses and unbridled lust for money have shaken America’s faith in its business leaders.

Bernie Ebbers, WorldCom Inc. founder.

Bernie Ebbers, Kenneth Lay, Dennis Kozlowski, John Rigas, these high-living honchos have come to personify the dark side of corporate culture.

Because of them, many believe, thousands of regular folk have lost jobs, pensions and hope.

And sinking investor confidence in corporate integrity is one of Wall Street’s biggest problems.

The problem may be traced to the hubris of corporate tycoons who, having built empires from scratch, regard them as their own personal candy stores.

“There’s something to the argument that people who have blazed their own paths in their industries start to believe they don’t have to play by the same rules as everyone else,” said former federal prosecutor Robert Mintz.

Dennis Kozlowski, former Tyco International Ltd. CEO.

John Coffee, a Columbia University law professor, said one reason so many CEOs go bad is because they can.

“I do think CEOs have become very powerful vis-a-vis their company boards, and the rules have been relaxed or compromised,” he said.

“If we’re talking about a founder CEO or someone who has tripled the size of the company, the CEO will get even more deference than someone who came in just three years ago.” Welcome to the lifestyles of the rich and sleazy.

Bernie Ebbers

Ebbers spent 19 years building WorldCom into a long-distance and Internet colossus. He was a deal-making machine who made a fortune by undercutting AT&T.

By 1997, WorldCom employed 80,000 people and had 5 percent of the U.S. long-distance market including the hotline between the White House and the Kremlin.

Two years later, Forbes magazine listed the former high school gym teacher as the 174th richest American worth an estimated $1.4 billion.

With WorldCom’s stock on a steady climb through the 1990s, Ebbers went on a buying spree. He bought a $60 million, 164,000-acre cattle ranch in British Columbia, half a million acres of timberland in the South, a yacht-building business in Georgia and a sloop named the Aquasition.

Kenneth Lay, former Enron chief executive.

He poured money into his soy farm in Louisiana and bought millions in WorldCom stock. Then the market tanked and WorldCom began to buckle under its towering $30 billion debt. Ebbers, it turned out, owed his company an astonishing $366 million because it bailed him out of personal loans that came due when WorldCom stock fell.

Ebbers was sent packing while news of the eye-popping loans sent WorldCom stock plunging further.

Then, WorldCom revealed that its internal auditors had found that $3.8 billion was wrongly listed on its books as capital expenses in 2001 and 2002. That means WorldCom may have lost millions of dollars when it reported profits. It appears to be the biggest case of corporate fraud in U.S. history.

Last week, WorldCom began laying off 17,000 workers. The next step could be bankruptcy.

Dennis Kozlowski

Last month, Kozlowski quit Tyco, the company he turned into a $36 billion monster, amid allegations he evaded $1 million in state taxes on masterpieces by Renoir, Monet and other artists.

On paper, the paintings were bound for Tyco offices in tax-free Exeter, N.H. In reality, prosecutors charge, they graced the walls of Kozlowski’s Fifth Avenue apartment. And to pay for the art, Kozlowski allegedly tapped into a Tyco fund designated for loans to let executives buy stock in the company.

Prosecutors said Kozlowski may have been trying to impress his bride with the $13 million worth of fine art. But with hundreds of millions in earnings since 1998, he already had an impressive portfolio.

Kozlowski owns a palace in Boca Raton, Fla., with pools, fountains, boat docks the works. To make room for tennis courts, Kozlowski bought the $3 million mansion next door and tore it down.

He has another mansion in New Hampshire where he keeps his helicopter, his Harley-Davidsons and a 130-foot sloop named Endeavour.

Kozlowski also has a stake as high as $20 million in New Jersey’s Nets and Devils.

Kenneth Lay

The Houston-based energy company he led imploded and left thousands of investors with worthless shares, but Lay and other top executives were able to unload theirs and save much of their fortunes in the process.

Lay was paid $300 million in salary and stock in the past four years.

Since the scandal, Enron has been accused of engineering the energy crisis in California and blamed for the downfall of accounting colossus Arthur Andersen, costing thousands of innocent people their jobs.

Lay and his lieutenants insist their hands are clean. But the howls were heard from coast to coast when Lay began crying poverty and his wife, Linda Lay, opened a second-hand store called “Jus’ Stuff” to sell off family knickknacks.

Around the same time, the Lays began putting their $20 million portfolio of luxury homes and properties including two $6 million vacation spreads in ritzy Aspen, Colo. on the market.

That still leaves Lay with a $7 million superluxury condo in one of Houston’s finest buildings and the commercial property housing Jus’ Stuff.

John Rigas

With Rigas, it was always about family his family.

The son of Greek immigrants, Rigas turned a $100 stake into the nation’s sixth-largest cable company, with 6 million subscribers from Florida to Los Angeles.

As Adelphia grew, Rigas and his children used the company as a personal piggy bank, investigators said. They dipped into the company coffers to buy Manhattan apartments, Cancun condos, vast tracts of land they even built a golf course, the probers said.

The Rigas family flew for free in corporate jets. When Rigas invested in the Buffalo Sabres hockey team, he got Adelphia to pitch in with $130 million.

Rigas built himself a sprawling Ponderosa surrounded by acres of manicured lawn, bisected by split-rail fences and dotted with picture-perfect barns painted chocolate brown.

He allegedly got his wife, Doris, a $371,000 contract to decorate Adelphia buildings. She ordered $12.4 million in furniture from a Rigas family business.

The roof caved in on Rigas in December when Adelphia admitted to investors it had backed a staggering $3 billion in loans to the family off the books. Now Adelphia and the thousands of people who work there are on the ropes.

Adelphia stock lost more than half its value last week, closing at 30 cents, off 99 percent so far this year.