I think you're blowing this mod thing out of proportion, I could see a lot of people wanting to be mods and signing an NDA if they were asked to simply thinking it applied to the information they see and the standard user doesn't. Ban reasons comes to mind.
I agree that an NDA for a public forum is questionable but on the other hand I can understand people wanting to be mods and not thinking twice about signing it before the last couple of weeks. Lots of them probably saw being a mod as an honor (for lack of a better word) at some point, it doesn't mean that they aren't entitled to change their mind or think constructively.
Did ANY of the mods LOSE money on this scam? If so then maybe they too are victims, but I haven't seen any of them that haven't admitted they dumped for a profit weeks ago, and only jumped ship now. I could be wrong, I only follow this thread not HT
I'm not sure that anybody who didn't buy a Hashstalker actually lost any money, they got the XPY at $4, it was above $4 for well over a week now. If anybody that's not stalking lost money it's on themselves. People buying Hashstalkers, that's a whole other story!