What I see here is askgamblers helping a problem gambler free roll a Casino that allows anonymous players to use VPNs.
Returning money to the player that self excluded is the worst option. Problem gamblers justify their decision to gamble any way they can think of, and when they lose, they pass responsibility for their decisions to other people in any way they can think of.
Askgamblers basically just gave the degen motivation to try the whole thing again, as well as cash in hand and an easy way to convince himself it was the Casinos fault, not his.
I guarantee you there are multiple players that have freerolled Stake and other casinos multiple times from alt accounts by self excluding and continuing to play and then publicly pressuring them to give their money back.
My $1m idea: The money should go to a charity chosen by the player at the time of self exclusion. Any funds he is caught gambling with are donated.
But do you know that all the casino's in the world do this for many years? This is why every casino have easy options to find the self-exclusion and allow users to come back after an interview if the self-exclusion is not over, as legal requirment. Stake avoids it because they are just saying: "meh", which is illegal.