NEW YORK – Warning that corporate crimes will result in “handcuffs and a jail cell,” federal authorities arrested the founder of Adelphia Communications and two sons Wednesday on charges they looted the now-bankrupt cable company and used it as their “personal piggy bank.”

John Rigas, 78, Adelphia’s founder, former chairman and CEO, and his sons, Timothy, 46, and Michael 48, were accused of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from the nation’s sixth-largest cable company, causing losses to investors of more than $60 billion.

Two other former executives – James R. Brown, 40, the former vice president of finance, and Michael C. Mulcahey, 48, the former director of internal reporting – were arrested in Pennsylvania.

The arrests followed two other major corporate prosecutions announced recently in Manhattan, against former executives at Tyco International Ltd. and ImClone Systems Inc.

William Kezer, head of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service in New York, which made the arrests, said they were “a clear message to corporate wrongdoers that handcuffs and a jail cell await those who violate the trust placed in them.”

In addition to the criminal charges filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, the Securities and Exchange Commission brought a civil lawsuit in the same court for “one of the most extensive financial frauds ever to take place at a public company.”

U.S. Magistrate Judge Gabriel Gorenstein freed the Rigases on $10 million bail apiece, secured by cash – $1 million for John Rigas and $500,000 for each son – plus land and other property.

Prosecutors argued for the high bail, saying they fear the men may flee. Defense lawyers dismissed the argument.

“There is no risk of flight in this case,” said Jeremy Temkin, a lawyer for Timothy Rigas.

Peter Fleming, an attorney for John Rigas, called his client “an extremely decent man. … He has never sold a share of Adelphia stock and therefore never profited from the sale of Adelphia stock.”

An attorney for Michael Rigas declined to comment after the afternoon hearing in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

Adelphia, based in Coudersport, Pa., filed for bankruptcy protection in June following months of turmoil after the company revealed billions of dollars in off-balance-sheet debt – much of it owed by the founding family.

The scandal has wiped out Adelphia shareholders. The company’s stock has fallen from a peak of $86 in May 1999 to 15 cents in over-the-counter trading Wednesday.

The SEC said the company fraudulently excluded billions of dollars in liabilities from its financial statements, falsified statistics, inflated its earnings to meet Wall Street’s expectations and concealed “rampant self-dealing by the Rigas family.”

It sought restitution, fines and to bar the defendants from ever again heading a company.

At a news conference in Washington, Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson said the defendants “victimized Adelphia shareholders through a wide variety of quite frankly brazen thefts.”

He said the company falsified its number of cable television subscribers and generated fake management fees while the family lied to its lenders and borrowed more than $2 billion from the company without reporting it to the SEC.

Thompson also said the founder, John Rigas, took $13 million from the company to build a golf course. Prosecutors said he received more than $67 million in undisclosed loans from the company and at least $1 million per month in secret cash payments.

In court papers, U.S. Postal Inspector Thomas F.X. Feeney said the investigation had revealed that Rigas, “together with members of his family, has looted Adelphia on a massive scale, using the company as the Rigas family’s personal piggy bank, at the expense of public investors and creditors.”