Of course it went to Coinbase's pocket! Those bitcoins do have private keys and since Coinbase doesn't offer private keys to their customers it's Coinbase that owns the private keys for all their assets (coins) under management.

Yeah it's a pretty shady or brilliant move, depending on your perspective. Coinbase gets the opportunity of BCC upside while avoiding the hassle of having to manage a new coin on their books. There could be some really sound business (sensible) reasons that led for the decision.

And you can't really call it robbery or fraud when Coinbase clearly announced to the world (and their customers directly) that they would not be offering BCC post-fork to any of their customers. They offered a date and time at which people would need to withdraw their bitcoin AND they encouraged people to withdraw their bitcoin if they wanted access to Bitcoin Cash.

They were as open and honest as anyone could expect...hardly a case for robbery or fraud.