The 37-count federal indictment yesterday of former and current top executives at Rite Aid Corp. is a sign of a government crackdown on corporate malfeasance aimed at restoring public confidence in financial markets, legal and academic analysts said yesterday.

Gone are the days when chief executives and other top officers held celebrity status and maintained an aura of invincibility.

Today, corporate titans are under intense scrutiny as government and industry struggle to repair Wall Street's image after a series of business scandals.

"They're not only trying to catch those who have done things wrong, but they're also sending a signal to the business community that you better play by the rules," said Jay W. Lorsch, a management professor at the Harvard Business School.

"Nobody knows how deeply this all goes or how many other companies are doing things that are not legal. But clearly, all of this is producing a crisis in confidence in American business."

Indicted in U.S. District Court in Harrisburg were Martin L. Grass, former Rite Aid chairman and chief executive; Franklin Brown, former chief counsel and vice chairman; and Franklyn Bergonzi, former chief financial officer.

The charges include conspiracy to commit fraud, fraud and making false statements to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Eric S. Sorkin, the company's executive vice president for pharmacy services, was charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice.

In addition to criminal charges, the SEC filed a complaint seeking the recovery of bonuses and other civil penalties aimed at Grass, Bergonzi and Brown.

The four indicted men join a growing number of executives caught up in high-profile corporate scandals in recent months.

Top executives at Enron Corp., Adelphia Communications Corp., Tyco International Ltd., ImClone Systems Inc. and others have been in the headlines accused of misdeeds. Arthur Andersen, once a blue-chip accounting firm, was convicted this month of obstructing justice for destroying documents of its client, Enron.

Though the Rite Aid case predates Enron's and other recent cases, the indictments occur as federal regulators step up their efforts to combat investor fraud and other questionable corporate behavior.

"This indictment is a representative straw in the wind and reflects the fact that U.S. attorneys over time are eventually responsive to the desires of their constituents, and across the country right now the public favors the increasing use of criminal sanctions in white-collar cases, particularly those that involve securities fraud," said John C. Coffee Jr., professor of law at Columbia University in New York.

It also sends a signal to executives that the government will go after them personally, something becoming increasingly common in high-profile cases, he said.

"There was a time when indicting the officers of a widely held public company would have been extremely rare. ... I would say this indictment should be something that will make the senior executives of Enron [and others] very nervous," Coffee said.

Herb Better, a former federal prosecutor and a Baltimore defense attorney specializing in white-collar criminal cases, said federal officials have been targeting individuals in such cases since the 1980s.

What's changing, he said, is the federal government's willingness to commit the extensive resources necessary to take on large corporate offenders.

Complex fraud cases can take years to sort out, tying up legions of prosecutors who could be working on other criminal cases.

"That the government was willing to apply the resources to put a case of this magnitude together is a reflection of the message that there will be zero tolerance of this kind of [behavior] and of the need to restore confidence in the marketplace," Better said.

The Bush administration has been particularly aggressive. The tough stance could be designed in part to shield the administration from criticism that it is too cozy with business interests, some legal experts said.

"We're clearly in a period right now where everybody is being tough on corporate defendants," said Solomon L. Wisenberg, a former prosecutor and an attorney with Ross, Dixon and Bell in Washington.

That new reality has spurred business groups to pursue reforms to head off a wider crisis.