No, no miles were taken from my account. My brother simply tried to learn of all available options from Delta (over the phone). Here is the detail:
The flight was at 1am. I got a call from my brother at ~11pm (HK time) telling me they don't have their luggage (left it at friend's home), but they are "lining up at customs". They apparently didn't realize their flight was on friday night (1am is technically saturday), and only just came back from their Thailand excursion an hour before.
At 12am (HK time), he called me again and told me that they missed their flight, and that Korean Air (KE) won't help them, since it was a Delta issued award ticket. Delta's counter was already closed. They tried to call Delta (HK or USA...I don't know), and Delta told them basically they were screwed - they had to pay 70K (or maybe 80K) for 3 of them EACH, and several thousand $$ for the 4th, since my account didn't have enough miles for all 4 of them. The flight would leave on monday. He was freaking out at that point. I got off the phone and called Delta. I called Delta (USA) ~1am HK time (~12pm USA time) informing them that the 4 passengers missed their return flight HKG-ICN-YYZ (all on KE). I ask that she help me find them a way home. I then started offering her routes that I think would work. We ended up with HKG-NRT-DTW-YYZ the same day (leaving ~7 hours from the missed flight). I asked her if this would cost me more points and she flatly said No. However, she said there was a $150 change fee per person. I checked my account after our conversation and I saw that 70,000miles were refunded x 4, and then 70,000 miles were taken x 4. (So it was even). What was even more interesting is that half way getting this done, I had to get off the phone to get DOB info for the passengers (she deleted it somehow and I didn't know the birthdays). When I called back, I couldn't find her, and another agent looked into the issue. She said she can't find low awards for the itinerary the first agent found. Then she looked some more and found the 4 flights already being held, and that they were marked as "standard level" (not "Savers level"). I was a little nervous. Anyway, I was able to get the new agent to message the 1st agent and she called me back on my phone and finished off issuing the tickets. My brother and his friends got home safely. It was a very nice flight with short connection at DTW-YYZ too! THANK YOU DELTA!

So was I charged correctly? (72hr rule)