A New York con man and old friend of disgraced ex-NYPD top cop Bernie Kerik became the ringleader of a Nxivm-like cult at Sarah Lawrence College — brainwashing his daughter and her friends into following his so-called teachings, while taking advantage of them sexually and emotionally, according to a New York Magazine expose.

Bay Ridge-born Lawrence Ray, 59, who was convicted of securities fraud in 2003, reportedly manipulated the bright college kids into following his so-called self-improvement program, controlling every aspect of their lives and convincing them to give him money and sex.

Some of the students were able to escape the cult, but others remain under Ray’s spell, according to the report.

The alleged con began in 2010 when Ray moved in with his daughter, Talia, and her 19-year-old friends in a drab dorm on the Bronxville campus and in an Upper East Side apartment he rented during school breaks. He had just been released from prison after being locked up for violating his parole in the 2003 case, the article says.

Slowly, he wrapped the kids up in his web, convincing them to undergo pseudo-therapy sessions with him and divulge their deepest childhood traumas, according to the article.

Any trivial mistake like scratching a pan, to Ray, was proof that the kids were trying to “sabotage” him and led to cruel punishments.

One student, Daniel Barban Levin, said Ray forced him to wear a “necklace” made of aluminum foil balls around his testicles and once threatened to dismember him with a knife. Levin, who felt unsure about his sexuality, said he was once forced to wear a dress and penetrate himself with a dildo in front of his housemates, who laughed. He moved out in 2013.

The middle-aged man allegedly manipulated some of the coeds into having sex with him, sometimes in groups.

“I got so freaked out. There was no consent in that situation,” Levin said about one girl named Isabella. “[She] may have seemed to be pursuing all of this, but her mind was being twisted by [Ray].”

Ray convinced the kids to have their parents pay him hundreds of thousands of dollars, the article says. Many of the students attempted suicide, but police told their worried parents nothing could be done since they were adults.

To keep the students in his grasp, Ray appears to have convinced them of a widespread government conspiracy theory involving former top cop Kerik and Rudy Giuliani.

Ray was the best man at Kerik’s 1998 wedding but turned on his friend, telling the federal government about the fallen cop’s ties to the mob via a construction chief named Frank DiTommaso.

“It’s clear they want to kill us,” Ray told the magazine about Kerik and DiTommaso. “They’re arrogant, they’re violent, they’re terrible people.”

Ray firmly believes he and his followers have been poisoned by Kerik agents, but wouldn’t delve into specifics, according to the magazine.

Through his lawyer, Glenn Ripa, he denied almost every allegation in the article. But in conversation, he admitted taking cash from at least one of the women.

“My intentions are honorable intentions,” he said.