hmmm this really looks like a complicated matter to judge with the available information. Really there are several plausible scenarios where POF or Chris could be at fault. The information available to the public is not enough to make an informed judgement. Everything else is pure speculation or pure DH0 (as per Paul Graham's disagreement hierarchy).

For what we see now, it is clear that POF people were scared shitless from the report (obviously) and tried to limit the damage and gain time by manipulating Chris whom they thought has downloaded all their users data and is extorting them against the disclosure of this data. I think anyone in their shoes would think the same (at least primarily).

Now wether Chris really intended to extort them or not is another matter we cant judge from what we are seeing. He does seem like a nice guys from his emails, and kind of excited about the "opportunity" but really that is not enough. Nice people sound nice... so do most criminals.

One more thing that is unclear ! Was POF actually hacked (in the sense that data was leaked) or was it just that a vulnerability got exposed? I think this will tell us a lot as well about the real motivation of the "hacker".