I think it's kind of a stretch to say that was deliberate. Most likely they didn't have anyone to code because so many people left.
I would argue (without proof) that the core dev team that "
stole" the PCs is the same dev team behind the GAW commits and is the same dev team making the commits today. There's no way to know who's behind the paycoindev user making checkins back in the days but sequence of events surely points in that direction.
The whole thing doesn't make sense.
aren't the prime controllers just specific addresses? you can't steal a private key. You can steal the coins stored at that address, but if you do that with paycoin, you lose the stake rate, and if this did happen, why wouldn't we have seen it on the blockchain by now?