https://i.imgsafe.org/d470f56061.jpg
Let's assume the hard-fork is performed and the DAO attacker is deprived of the 3.6M ether he has drained. What happens next?

### The alternative
If he is a smart ass (and he seems to be) the attacker will take the case to the court and press charges against **anybody** involved in the hard-fork. And now we'll have this alternative:

- The defendant maintains the stance that no entity stands behind the DAO. This implies that the DAO is fully autonomous and its code is the only source (or manifestation) of the contract. This wins the case for the plaintiff.

- The defendant maintains that the attacker's actions were "illegitimate" and the DAO contract in extreme cases can be superseded by external actions (such as hard-fork).  But then we have two big problems:
(a) The white hat operation becomes equally "illegitimate".
(b) Slockit (or anybody involved) can be easily accused of an illegal attempt to raise funds.

This is a deadly alternative. To preserve the legality of the DAO, people involved in it must stick to the interpretation that there is nothing more but the DAO. Yet to be able to defend themselves against the attacker's charges in a court of law they will have to expand this interpretation and admit that the DAO is not fully autonomous. This situation requires walking a very thin line.

### Additional facts
These two facts can have crucial impact in this case:

- The DAO's terms and conditions clearly state that there is no other binding documentation but the DAO code. Also, they do not specify jurisdiction in case of a dispute. This implies that the attacker can perform so called *jurisdiction shopping* or, in other words, he can choose any jurisdiction that suits him in terms of law favorable to him.

- Here is a fragment of the open letter allegedly written by the attacker:
*I have carefully examined the code of The DAO and decided to participate after finding the feature where splitting is rewarded with additional ether.*
This basically means that the attacker will insist that due to the lack any other binding documents, what he did was right in terms of his understanding of the contract. By acquiring a good layer and following this strategy, he is quite likely to either win the case or cause lots of legal difficulties for anybody involved  in creating and deploying the DAO. Also, this will scare anybody in the future to do an enterprise similar to the DAO on the Ethereum platform.

### Persistence to be expected
So it all depends how persistent the attacker is going to be. My prediction is that even after the hard-fork the attacker will not give up easily due to these two facts:

- There is a lot of money involved so even if there is a 10% chance of wining, the expected value is still big.

- He can easily recoup his legal fees by insider trading (e.g. he can short ETH again just before he files the charges).

### Identity revealed
There is just one important caveat: in order to take the case to the court, the attacker will have to reveal his identity. Will he be willing to do that? But even if he is not, he can always sell his private keys to somebody who has no problem with that. Surely there will be many people willing to take on this role. There is simply too much money involved to assume the DAO incident will be closed after the hard-fork.

***Disclaimer**: I am not a lawyer so I might be wrong.*

EDIT: For more professional insight please refer to [this conversation](https://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/andreas-antonopoulos-is-live-right-now-with-part-2-of-ltb-297-the-death-of-thedao) at 0:46:30-0:48:00 and 0:58:30-1:09:00.