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... because those accounts were already frozen, and if the funds were sent back, the owner would still not be able to withdraw their Steem since Justin was already holding their Steem hostage, even though they could view the balances.

Yes Ma'am @canadian-coconut but those users certainly have accounts in exchanges where they can receive their individual liquid steem.
Now it is still unsure if Bittrex will do the trouble of giving either to the affected parties or back to steem because of the issue of consensus regardless of the stake being stolen.

Oh, I thought that you were talking about sending back to the Steem wallets.
I think that "Robin Hood" was worried that he wouldn't have enough time to sort out all of the Bittrex account #'s, before Justin Sun might discover what happened and somehow regain control of the community account. Plus he may not want to expose who he really is, which he would have to do in order to ask people for their Bittrex account #'s.

Yes that might be the case, to secure the stake before Justin Sun could get hold of the account again before this "Good White Hat Guy" could sort out on how to redistribute it again. So they now have to hope that Bittrex would give it back not to the last owner community321.
For my opinion Bittrex will choose to give it back to the latter because again of the consensus factor.

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