3) It is impossible to programmatically protect against source code. Adding balance checks here wouldn't have saved everyone. It might have stopped one or two transactions from going through, but it's not complete. Additionally, once we have that in, there are other things developers can do to hide coins. It becomes a cat and mouse game.
Sure? It's just a few lines of code.
1. Set max money supply (based on announce thread) to variable A
2. Check the total coins on the exchange after each deposit. If it's more than variable A, stop the market and check it by hand.
So, if you had an alert for 1.500.000+ coins on your exchange, you'd prevent this scam.