Think they just saw it as a way to easily blame a hack because the coins they had was a nice chunk of change and running with it now means less likely to get caught. At end of the day the guy who ran it for years that never stole any coins ended up in a cell & his 100k BTC aren't much use there.

I can't see how this would of happened any other way than the admins taking the funds. Why would it of been setup with an automated system to check stuck transactions rather than have a human look at it. They also claim they knew about exchanges having issues & knew what the issue was so surely if they had an automated system that can re-send funds when it thinks the transaction didn't go through surely he would of shut it down or turned it off.

I'm sure most people in his position would take the money & run.