It is not unreasonable that an ethically minded person would have chosen to take the actions that he did. For example, consider if his first priority was to pro

It is not unreasonable that an ethically minded person would have chosen to take the actions that he did. For example, consider if his first priority was to protect the people whose PII was leaked. With the hackers' identities known, Uber or Sullivan is able to use the threat of exposing their crime as leverage if they should notice that the PII is being exploited. The 100k doesn't make single-game game-theoretic sense but can guard against people who expect a tit-for-tat.