It's known as
cooling the mark out. If they just came out and said "ha ha suckers all your coin is belong to us" you'd be mad. You'd maybe hunt them down. But instead a stream of "we've been hacked", "we're moving servers", "we'll be back soon", "there's database corruption", "we're fixing it", "..." gives you time to get used to your loss, and gives your anger time to dissipate.
That is a fascinating link, thanks. I'd mentioned this tactic was likely the reason for scrypt.cc to continue communicating with their marks but I was unaware it was a studied sociopsychological process.