So did they ask the community for an ICO or how did they "fund" the "development" of their exchange? What's the actual scam here about and how much was presumably lost? CryptoDao was fully operational but very slow and pretty bad. As I said, this one exclusive ICO obviously convinced some people to deposit funds over there.
There was an ICO, with bounties, signature campaign, etc., and it successfully raised a considerable sum, although now I doubt that they reported it accurately.
They most likely didn't report it accurately, but probably still made a good amount of money. As you said, hard to tell whether it was their intention to run off, but to be honest most likely it was. I guess they've never done any sort of interview or showed their faces, and there was a reason for that from the start.