When news broke that TV star Tom Selleck was accused of swiping water for his avocado ranch in Ventura County, the phones at the Lupin Lodge nudist camp above Los Gatos lit up with calls from friends and guests.

How could the former “Magnum P.I.” star be slapped on the wrist when one of the owners of the Lupin Lodge was shackled at the waist for his H2O transgression?

Allegations of water thievery are cropping up across California, as wells and creeks run dry in a punishing drought now in its fourth summer. But the penalties for suspected scofflaws, from the Bay Area to the Hollywood Hills, vary as much as the body types found in Lupin Lodge’s skinny dipping pool.

Central Valley farmers who tap into irrigation ditches in defiance of state orders, for instance, are bogged down in civil court. Crooks who steal water from a fire hydrant in Crockett or Oakland could be hit with a $1,000 fine. Thieves who take water from the Contra Costa canal might only face a $250 citation. But criminal charges?

“As far as I know we’ve never called the district attorney,” said East Bay Municipal Utility District spokeswoman Abby Figueroa. “I don’t think it would get the DA’s attention.”

But in the Santa Cruz Mountains, Glyn and Lori Stout and two of their employees could face as many as three years in prison if convicted of felony conspiracy and trespassing for dipping their hoses into a section of Hendry’s Creek last summer. The creek had gone dry where it traversed the Stouts’ property, but upstream was still running through the neighboring property recently purchased by the Mid-Peninsula Open Space District.

The couple were arrested late last month and booked at Santa Clara County jail, where they were processed for several hours before being sent home.

“To be handcuffed and having my husband handcuffed and shackled — it’s not fair,” co-owner Lori Stout said Thursday. “We don’t feel like we were trying to water our avocado trees. We were trying to keep the tanks full” largely for fire protection in the heavily wooded mountains that encompass their 111-acre property.

The Stouts also believe their water rights are grandfathered in because previous owners have freely let them tap into the creek, especially in past droughts. They said the open space district was “hardly neighborly” for taking the dispute so far.

But Santa Clara County deputy district attorney Denise Raabe, who works in the office’s environmental division, says the case against the Stouts is serious.

“They committed crimes,” she said in a recent interview. “This case is not about people skinny dipping in a swimming pool. It’s about the diversion of water from an environmentally sensitive area being used for business purposes. It’s a business that has run out of water, looks at their neighbor and says, ‘They’ve got water. I’m going to take it.’ “

The behavior continued even after rangers confronted the Stouts and removed the hoses from the creek, according to a statement from the District Attorney’s Office.

In Ventura County’s Hidden Valley, where celebrities and sports figures live behind gated estates on lots no smaller than 40 acres, Selleck was accused of repeated violations, too. But the severity of his purported sins — and his intentions — are a bit more murky.

The Calleguas Municipal Water District went after Selleck when it discovered a white truck repeatedly tapping into a hydrant in Thousand Oaks and followed it to Selleck’s gated estate in a neighboring community.

They even spent $22,000 to hire a private investigator — just like Magnum P.I. — to tail the truck. When they ordered Selleck to cease-and-desist, the water runs continued, according to a civil complaint the district filed this week.

Why no criminal charges? Well, on Thursday — after the celebrity water heist made national headlines — the district’s lawyer told this newspaper that Selleck might have paid the owner of the mysterious white truck for the water. The district could only prove Selleck was violating its rules by hauling its water outside the district.

“We just want him to stop doing it,” said Grant Burton, the district’s attorney.

The water district had brought in the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office to investigate, but the agency dropped the case after it found “no intent to commit a crime,” according to Capt. John Reilly.

That left the water district with a civil complaint, which it settled with Selleck on Thursday, a day after filing it. The details are confidential until next week. “Punishing past behavior is not what this is about,” Burton said. “Preventing behavior in the future, that’s what this is about.”

Calls and emails to Selleck’s publicist were not returned Thursday.

The Stouts, meanwhile, will be arraigned next week in criminal court.

“We are good stewards of the water,” Lori Stout said. “We feel we are singled out for unfair criminal punishment.”

Contact Julia Prodis Sulek at 408-278-3409. Follow her at twitter.com/juliasulek