Not sure what you are talking about here...
Like domob mentioned above, Mikhail (thecoder) died very suddenly shortly after Huntercoin launched. It was a pretty big shock for everyone. He had the coins and private keys, so it was all lost...
My bad, I heard so many times about lost keys by the developers that I don't believe it anymore because every time it turns out to be a lie in the end.
I wasn't aware of the Huntercoin sad story about the death of the developer in the early stages of the project.
I assume everything was checked and theses coins were never moved from these wallets?
As I said already is not the first time I hear such story and always coins finally were moved from these wallets to exchanges and sold.
This happens almost always in the end (postponed exit scam) or when the project has bad times and is at the straight way to oblivion.