$10,000 is a good amount of money, especially when you are long-term unemployed (his loan listing on BTC-Jam said he was unemployed), or even unemployed at all. Based on the fact that he was trying to take out a very large loan and was trying to start a group buy worth tens of thousands of dollars, I think it is apparent that he was trying to get away with more.
$10,000 is worth closer to $13,000 or $14,000 worth of income after you take into consideration the fact that taxes would not be withheld from any amount of money that he steals/scams. This could easily be 4 or 5 months worth of salary to someone making $35,000 to $45,000 per year.
He will most likely not go to jail over this as it would probably be reasonably implied that the money is a debt obligation of his. I also have heard a report that he was refusing to sign a message agreeing to the terms of trades so it would be possible for him to claim in court that his account was sold/hacked/ect. (however I would doubt this would be true, as if it was then I would think he would come back and claim as much)
I texted with him from may 4 till may 17. With the phone number in his profile: 0017174544274
I got a phone number from him he claimed is his private one. I think its fine at this point to post it: 0017174193511927
I didnt call him on that or get answers to my sms from there.
Sounds like you Blazed or your mutual friend might be the key to putting the squeeze on Maidak for some real answers, or to find out if he is really just buying time.
People in the Bitcoin community have been identified and still gotten away with much larger thefts before. There have been many examples but I'm mainly referring to dice sites DiceBitco.in and Dice.ninja. The combined thefts of those 2 sites were multiple millions of USD if I remember correctly.
Why didnt the victims sue? Many scammers were found already.