I don't get why can't the forum hire like one or two people to recover those locked accounts with signed messages.
This trust means that they can access to admin's account. Thus they have full powers just as theymos does.
Even if we assume that such a trust exists, the large number of admins will cause some bugs + any hacks of these accounts would threaten the forum as a whole.
Also, the process of restoring accounts is not merely a sign/verify the message.
The best solution is that theymos trusts the investigations of some members and thus recovers those accounts based on their recommendations.