Dash WAS transparent about it. And the Dash wouldn't be worth anything if Evan hadn't worked hard to take Dash where it is today. He built the team that is taking us to Evolution and beyond. Not only that, he is using his Dash to build the future, namely DAOs he will fund once we get to that point. These won't be DAOs for making himself more money, they're DAOs that are to function, somewhat like governments, an experiment he is wanting to try. To see if people can fund DAOs that serve the community, and be 100% answerable to the community, or they get fired and others hired. Not like a bloated inefficient and ineffective government like we have today.
And believe me, those who were there and mined in the very beginning, those who had gotten that dam burst of coins were the first to sell them. I doubt any of them still own much of those Dash. Even Evan's friends and some of the great people there at the beginning have moved on, and even dumped their coins in rage quits.
It's really hilarious, honest it is, to see "investors" (actually fools) throw their good money after all kinds of silly ICOs, each new one still draws more investors than the last. A fool and his money are easily parted.
Me? I was a fool for a few hundred dollars by buying Dash. I can only say God smiled on me that this project turned out to really be something. I know I was exceedingly lucky, and perhaps there is something to my intuition - because I really liked Evan from the start. I liked his passion and his flexibility and his energy. It turned out to be a good call. Even when I did buy my Dash, by that point I was convinced that it was going places. The project had exploded with ideas almost daily, it was amazing. I know a lot of projects have taken the easy way out with web wallets to make things easier to use, but they're centralized. Putting account information directly on the blockchain... just bloats it (NEM I think?) and eventually, it'll be hard to retrieve. Dash is doing it right. Somehow, Evan et al have foreseen every issue, and come up with a solution to them. The plan is there, the work has been going full on for over a year and a half, and when Dash Evolution comes out, people will be shaking their heads wondering where all this came from because they weren't paying attention https://youtu.be/m2ou-WIxfLY?t=1m36s
Not saying you are wrong. Quite the opposite, you are definitely right. Nonetheless, people would hardly touch coins that get instamined as hard as Dash got unstained in the beginning. While Evan really worked hard, that will not be the case in 99/100 projects. So after all, I am fine with how it went. As you said, anyone could have made a ton of money even after all the scam accusations started. Most of them probably didn't as you said.