That's exactly what I would do in his place if I was a morally corrupt scammer that wanted to stack up on Steem.

I'd delist it with a short notice no one sees. When ever a exchange delists a token there's always a bunch of that token left there. If you make it so rarely anyone sees your delisting then you're left with 800k Steem like in this case.
He already controls a whales stake and didn't have to spend a dime.