Here's my guesses as to what happen in order of plausibility:
1. Their story is legit and the hardware was stolen by some shady datacenter operator and FC was kidnapped or something.
2. FC was stealing electricity and he along with the hardware was taken by the police.
3. FC decided to pull an exit scam after Prisma 2.0's and BE300 turned out to be failures.
In no case do I think the scam was premeditated or that anyone other than FC was involved.
Do you honestly put 1. "James Bond-esque kidnapping operation" above 2 and 3 "trivial scams that have happened time and again in the Bitcoin ecosystem"?
What is the logic that leads you to think that 1 is more likely than 3 or 2?? Other than blind faith, I mean.