I was just reading an article by Graham Cluley (Sophos) in Virus Bulletin’s December, 2004 issue. Here is an excerpt:

"Sven Jaschan, the German lad who admitted to having written the Sasser and Netsky worms, will be spending Christmas wondering about his fate in the new year, too….Jaschan was extraordinary…Over 70% of the viruses sighted in the first half of 2004 were written by the German teenager."

So just keeping him "off the ‘Net" would have reduced our "in the wild" viruses by 70% for that period. Any mechanism, like a bounty, that assisted in catching him would be well worth it simply to limit his output.