I've watched the whole Instawallet fiasco like a hawk because I had some BTC in Instawallet.
I never used Instalwallet, but I did keep an eye on how davout and boussac behaved during and after the incident because they are involved in other Bitcoin projects.
I started using it before davout bought or was given the funds from Jav. Jav seemed like a trustworthy guy to me. Even after davout got a hold of things I didn't have any reason to distrust him at the time.
I was to lazy to take it out Had something like 50 BTC there, but considering they were like $3/BTC when I put them there it was $150. I finally got off my ass and removed all but 20-something BTC like the day before the 'hack'. I wonder how many others were doing the same thing and if a lot, if that triggered davout to pull the trigger.
The way they handled the situation looks to me consistent with what I'd expect from scammers.
I cannot agree with that fully. In all honesty, it seemed to me like they went through a period of confusion then put together a workable strategy to get people payed off. The nature of the solution being kind of privacy oriented made it a somewhat more difficult problem than it might have been.
I didn't get a strong sense one way or the other on the suspiciousness of the behavior early on. My best guess at this point is that from day one they planned to skim the unclaimed wallets and had to have a shutdown to do it. When the opportunity to nail an extra $1M at the expense of robbing one person who had already called them names came along, they could not resist.
Honest people would show some signs of remorse and humility after losing so much of other people's money - they were arrogant and hostile instead.
Sorry to be disagreeable, but I'm not sure I feel exactly the same way about that either. I don't know a lot of French people, but they have a reputation for being conceited pricks. (Not all of course.) Davout and Boussac sort of match this stereotype so I personally cannot read a lot into that...and I'm a conceited prick myself but not dishonest and not a thief.
The way they handled the supposed investigation and audit was very suspicious. That is the single biggest factor in swaying me to believe that they probably are crooks.