The bail hearings for Dustin Lewis and Brian Sorensen took just a few minutes on Aug. 4 in U.S. Magistrate Judge Nancy Koppe’s courtroom.

Most present in court that day came to witness the initial appearance of Marcus Hutchins, the 23-year-old computer hacker accused of attempting to profit from the sale of the ominous-sounding Kronos banking trojan. With his mop of hair and soft voice, Hutchins looked more like a sleepy pop star than a diabolical web mastermind.

Lewis and Sorensen, meanwhile, appeared clean-cut and somewhat confused, but the reading of the felony fraud charges -- which carried the threat of 30 years in prison and a $1 million fine -- quickly focused their attention.

The local accountants are accused of fraud and conspiracy in the alleged bilking of OneWest Bank in a $1.95-million short-sale scheme involving a 5,331-square-foot, five-bedroom house in Henderson. It appeared to lack the sexiness of the tale of the baby-faced hacker that had drawn the British press on overnight flights to Las Vegas on the trail of Hutchins, and the fact the two men happened to also be CPAs might have produced a collective yawn.

But looks can be deceiving.

The government alleges Lewis submitted a fraudulent short-sale application to the bank, which used the information in deciding to let him sell the house to a Sorensen family member for a fraction of what Lewis owed on the mortgage. Lewis neglected to disclose he had arranged with Sorensen to remain in the house until he was able to buy back the house free of the bank loan.

With the house back in his name and mortgage-free, on July 21, Lewis put it on the market for $1.195 million.

What the government’s indictment announcement didn’t disclose was the fact that Sorensen is an accountant at the regional office of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. Lewis has been employed at the slippery LL Bradford accounting firm -- the same operation that managed to receive a $1 million government contract to provide a financial audit of Hoover Dam, which is managed by the agency.

Sorensen and Lewis are thoroughly jammed up, but they may have a card to play. That is, if they happen to have insight into what’s been going on inside the Reclamation office, whose financial management director Frederick “Rick” Zaffarese Leavitt is currently the target of an FBI public corruption investigation. They might just have a story to tell that agents want to hear.

Leavitt has been associated with the Department of the Interior since 1993 while he was still taking finance classes at UNLV. He was named financial management director at the regional office in Boulder City in 2010.

It’s a big job with a lot of responsibility, including the oversight of the Lower Colorado Region’s financial management program, including its internal fiscal and auditing controls and financial statements. The Lower Colorado Basin includes Southern Nevada, Southern California, Arizona, and parts of Utah and New Mexico.

Somehow, Leavitt managed to perform that duty and still have time left over to serve as a director of Vestin Mortgage’s llimited liability companies. His paid tenure at Vestin ended about the time the FBI came knocking.

The FBI’s local public corruption unit served search warrants in February 2016 at Bureau of Reclamation regional office in Boulder City, Leavitt’s palatial Henderson home, and the accounting firm, which is located in the same building that houses Vestin Mortgage at 8800 W. Sunset Road.

Considering the dam audit comes at a time the electricity service contracts for 11 Southern California cities are just a few months from needing renewal, the ethics and credibility of Leavitt and LL Bradford are even more important.

And that makes Lewis and Sorensen more than a couple of numbers crunchers in trouble. It’s no stretch to surmise their insider access to Reclamation and Bradford make at least one of them a potentially valuable government witness. The bank fraud case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick Burns and investigated by the FBI, IRS-Criminal Investigation, and the U.S. Department of Interior-Office of the Inspector General.

Neither Sorensen nor Lewis has a felony conviction. But Lewis has a history of serious violations of general accounting standards, according to the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB). Lewis and Bradford company partner Eric Bullinger in 2015 was barred from associating with public company audits. Lewis was suspended for at least two years, and the company was blasted by the PCAOB for multiple audit deficiencies. Past Bradford officials have been linked to penny stock companies suspected of participating in pump-and-dump schemes.

It’s a safe guess the pending bank fraud indictment and connection to the alleged dam audit scam are going to complicate Dustin Lewis’ reinstatement and his freedom.

John L. Smith is a longtime Las Vegas journalist and author. Contact him at [email protected]. On Twitter: @jlnevadasmith.