I might be wrong, but it wasn't returned, but that doesn't matter, all the mining ops switched to the 0.7 chain, and the transaction is now in limbo (for lack of a better term); the forked 0.8 chain.
Still, it's an exploitable vulnerability. Very difficult to make the conditions happen, but if they happen naturally it's something that can be taken advantage of. It'll need to be addressed in one way or another.
What IRC channel out of curiosity?
But if it happened like you think, I definitely agree with you.