I think it's pretty much the opposite. In absolute terms you will generally make more running an exit scam than operating legitimately, for far less effort. When I was running Just-Dice, I was taking 10% commission on profits, which is a healthy amount. The site profited by around 20k, so I was able to take around 2k in commission. When I shut the site down the bankroll was
in the region of 50k. That's 50k that I could have just kept rather than returning. By returning it, I turned down the chance of "earning" 25 times more than I had earned in the previous year of hard work. I will likely never earn that much again, so the argument that "trusted people won't scam because they earn more by being honest" doesn't work. You make more stealing than you do being honest. Which, I guess, is why we see so many people stealing.
I agree. Unfortunately it would be the fastest way. You take a high risk and you take a reward though unfortunately a scammer in the same position would profit more... if he would be able to hide properly after that.
I think you paying back all these 50k bitcoins was the point where i raised you on top of my most trusted persons on the forum. You surely had the thought to default but you had a good character.
And the risk is high too. The highest amount of coins i held that i did not own was only 10% of the 50k you held but even then i had to go through a very risky situation because these were refunds and the person who gave the refunds made a script that easily could have lead to great errors. For example a user i made a scam accusation against later tried to claim the refunds. It only would have needed a click on a confirmation link on my email and the refunds would have gone to his address. And you running just-dice with that amount of bitcoins had to bear 10 times the risk. It surely is no fun to think about that. It's somewhat frightening.
Anyway... i think there are a lot of honest people on bitcointalk and when it is about escrows then the prevented scams were surely WAY WAY more worth in bitcoins than the scams that happened with or from escrows.