Payday-lending magnate Scott Tucker wasn’t alone in a grand jury indictment.

Scott Tucker made a fortune — $419 million, according to the Federal Trade Commission’s estimates — in payday lending. That fortune paid for an $8 million home in Aspen, a handful of Ferraris and his motorsports hobby.

Tucker was a main driver for Level 5 Motorsports, a high-end auto-racing team that competed in North America and Europe. He spent his time on the competition circuit outracing his opponents, culminating in several top-class finishes in the American Le Mans Series.

As in his racing success, Tucker outmaneuvered his competition in his business enterprises. That competition included not only others who sought quick money by charging high-interest, high-risk loans to poor or desperate consumers, but also regulators who suspected that the Leawood man’s businesses practices ran afoul of the law.

Federal prosecutors caught up to Tucker around the third turn last week when they arrested him in Kansas City, Kansas, following an indictment from a grand jury in New York that suspected Tucker of racketeering in connection to unlawful debt collections. Authorities accuse Tucker, one of Kansas City’s wealthiest men, of bilking consumers through an elaborate corporate scheme that charged usurious interest rates. The practice, they say, was facilitated by establishing corporate payday-lending enterprises on tribal lands, allowing him to skirt state regulations on interest rates.

Tucker appeared in court last Wednesday, decked out in black athletic gear. He was in handcuffs and his ankles were shackled as U.S. Marshals led him to a table where his attorney, Jeffrey Morris, was seated. Tucker was facing magistrate Judge David Waxse for a first appearance before being sent to New York next week to face federal prosecutors.

Tucker looked distressed, often rubbing his eyes and speaking softly in response to routine questions from Waxse. According to court documents filed in another case against Tucker, he had no idea that he would be arrested on the morning of February 10.

Seated across the table from Trucker was Tim Muir. Dressed in a black hoodie, white khakis and athletic sandals worn with black socks, Muir often smiled and laughed during the proceedings with Tom Bath, the amiable and famous criminal defense lawyer. Muir’s wife, a lawyer herself, sat silently two rows behind where federal prosecutors were seated.

While Tucker has been the subject of a great many news stories about his payday-lending enterprises, including in The Pitch, less is known about Muir.

Muir has been Tucker’s attorney and the general counsel of AMG Services Inc., a business that handled a significant portion of Tucker’s payday-lending operations. AMG was incorporated on a tribal reservation, but significant evidence exists that the company operated out of an office tower in Overland Park and had only a nominal presence on tribal lands.

Muir is also listed as the president of Black Creek Capital, an obscure company that intersected with the online-payday-lending operations by paying for each website’s registration fees.

Muir’s relationship with Tucker is a complicated one. During the February 3 hearing, Waxse agreed not to hold Tucker and Muir in custody of federal agents (although he would hold their residences on bond were they to skip subsequent court appearances). Waxse’s agreement to let the men free was stipulated on a number of factors, including that they not speak to one another.

Attorneys for Muir and Tucker objected to that stipulation. They pointed out that Muir, as Tucker’s attorney, shouldn’t be legally bound from communicating with his client. Waxse and federal prosecutors, recognizing the strong legal precedent that binds an attorney to his client, relented and dropped that condition.

The indictment against Muir alleges that he was an architect of the idea that Tucker’s businesses incorporate on tribal lands in exchange for a whiff of the revenues that companies like AMG would generate. Federal prosecutors will try to prove that the Indian tribes had virtually no real role in running the businesses, and that they were established only to evade state-level usury laws.

Tucker appears to be Muir’s only client, or at least his most significant client. Records show that he worked from the same Overland Park building where AMG Services did its business.

Federal prosecutors may have a tough time simultaneously prosecuting Muir and Tucker. Conversations between the two men, which may amount to crucial evidence against Tucker, could be inadmissible under attorney-client privilege.

In separate cases, Muir’s attorneys have couched the Overland Park man as the attorney of record for the tribal reservations that incorporated the payday-lending enterprises, making Muir the center of the triumvirate of Tucker, the payday-lending businesses and the tribes that appeared to work with Tucker.

While Tucker is the highest-profile payday-lending executive to find himself in handcuffs, Muir may end up being the most important defendant in the upcoming court proceedings.