Mentions /u/jstolfi for clarifying the situation.
The Robin Hood Group
During the DAO disaster, a group of Ethereum supporters exploited the DAO reportedly to retrieve DAO funds.
On social media, they identified themselves as the Robin Hood Group or the White Hat Hackers.
What happened
ETH's Hard Fork nullified the DAO exploit on the ETH chain, but not on the ETC chain.
As a result, these hackers ended up with ETC taken from the ETC clone of the DAO.
They subsequently decided to move that ETC to "exchanges", which are believed to have included Poloniex and Kraken.
To their dismay, these exchanges decided to freeze their moved ETC.
Stated intentions behind "White Hat" hack
In response to community suspicion, one of their spokespersons /u/jbaylina wrote a post on Reddit to clarify their motives.
According to him:
They 'intended' to sell ETC for ETH to invest that ETH in Ethereum projects - based on "signals" of community support.
"signals were received from the greater community to distribute these ETC in ETH, to continue to support Ethereum projects"
They 'intended' to return part of that "salvaged" ETC to DAO investors in ETH, to relieve the community of the technical burden of managing their ETC themselves.
"Also, a large portion of the community does not have the technical ability to safely work both with ETC and ETH in the same address; therefore, returning part of salvaged ETC in ETH seemed to be the safest for all the parties involved."
They also added that the reason for their discretion in moving ETC, was to "avoid speculators taking advantage of the situation "
Their response to the ETC freeze
They are now petitioning exchanges to return their frozen ETC to designated multi-sig wallets.
If anything, it'll surely be interesting to see how this situation develops...