Whether it was Vern, another Cryptsy employee, a hacker, or the government; that is one of the worst decisions to make. You would have to be truly oblivious about this community & how the medium-sized altcoin markets function. If Vern was just the boating shoes & the signature on some Costa Rican banking documents then it's possible he was that oblivious. but I have the feeling if I combed through his Twitter I would see that he had some knowledge & awareness.
The government is incompetent in either scenario:
(1) They thought by simply having the computer that they had the altcoins secured, allowing Vern or a Cryptsy employee to steal the funds.
(2) They moved the funds to Bittrex for storage & dispersal.
I suppose (2) wouldn't be that unreal if they made a deal with Bittrex to disperse the funds. You'd think that they wouldn't want to trust another exchange, & for $400/hr you'd be able to hire a small programming team to handle it. Really though, there is no way an attorney is going to be able to process hundreds of altcoins, secure them, & redistribute them. Was he appointed a government software engineer for the case? Is there an anti-fraud investigation team combing through the data? Who the hell was entrusted with securing the funds?
Probably the greatest fail would be if it was the original hacker. That would mean that Vern failed to re-secure all funds after the initial hack, the government failed to secure the funds from Vern & the hacker, & the hacker failed to understand that Bittrex would freeze their funds within hours & that buy depth wasn't large enough to handle 15,000 UNO at a reasonable price.
Regardless, we got off really well. This is not just potential crisis averted, but a display of strength, & a confirmation that those damn coins are finally secured.
Honestly at this point I feel better that those coins are with Bittrex than anyone else.
I tend to agree with your hypothesis number 1.
The court appointed receiver is an accountant/lawyer. He may not understand what the hell all this is. You can change the locks on a warehouse full of inventory, and an old school accountant/lawyer would certainly know to do that in the event of receivership.
But I have a funny feeling that he doesn't realize that the locks aren't in the computers and that it's pretty easy to have a couple of sets of keys laying around.
I'm thinking a Cryptsy insider did this.
The accountant/lawyer would understand market liquidity, and is charged with maximising the value of the asset. Also, liquidation would not come this quickly. There are 100's of altcoins and 1000's of accounts--each one a liability that must be catalogued and put in it's proper place on the liquidation line.
People owed UNO would be paid in UNO. That UNO that belonged to Cryptsy itself would be EVENTUALLY subject to liquidation, but they would either do that in an auction, or hire a competent trader to liquidate it. They wouldn't just dump it into an illiquid market. The accountant in him probably understands at least that much.
Somebody who lives in Florida should really offer themselves up to the Receiver as a consultant to secure all the wallets before Vern or one of his clueless minions decides to try this again.