Holy christing mother of fuck, that's a shitty thing to do. Seriously, as a community we need to vet who runs these exchanges so as to avoid debacles like this. Exchange owners should not be able to take the money and run.
The vetting was done by John Hammes aka BitJohn pretending to be in an Army office located in an Afghanistan war zone, but was really living in North Carolina out of the service for years with his wife Faith and daughter.