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Perek 9 begins with two Mishnayot that discuss the law of the gazlan, the "robber", i.e. someone who directly confronts a property owner and steals his property. Unlike the ganav (the "burglar" about who we learned previously), the gazlan is not required to pay double (or even 4 or 5 times ) the amount he stole, rather only the principle, and if he also made a false oath of denial and then came clean, he must also add an additional 25%, and offer a sacrifice in the Temple. (Why the Torah is more stringent with a ganav than a gazlan is a classical question. You can one find treatment of the question here. In any case, our first two Mishnayot make the point that if the object that the gazlan stole is no longer intact, he must pay the value of the object as of the time of the theft. Appreciations or depreciations in value that occurred after the the time of the theft are not figured in to the gazlan's obligation.
The next two Mishnayot make a brief departure from the laws of the gazlan to note a parallel law with regard to a craftsman or artisan who receives raw material from a customer, but then proceeds to (inadvertently) ruin or destroy those materials instead of improving them as he had been hired to do. The unfortunate artisan / craftsman must obviously compensate the customer, and the amount that he owes is assessed based on the moment when the damage took place, not before. This moment is the equivalent of the "moment of theft" in the case of the gazlan.
The perek then returns to the law of the gazlan. The discussion here rests very squarely on the Biblical presentation of the laws of the gazlan, which are found in Vayikra 5: 21-26. Mishnayot 5 and 6 take their cue from the Torah's framing of the gazlan laws as essentially being "the laws about how a gazlan repents". Unlike in the Torah's ganav discussion, which is primarily focused on punishing the ganav, the gazlan discussion is focused on rehabilitating the gazlan.
Mishna 7 widens the lens of our discussion to include other kinds of theft that are also listed in Vayikra chapter 5, and which are dealt with in the same way as the deeds of the gazlan are. Prominent among these are the custodian who was given an object to watch, who then swears that he had never received any such object, and finally now wants to come clean. Mishna 8 introduces as "crossover" case in which such a custodian actually winds up being sentenced as a ganav rather than as a gazlan!
Mishna 9 returns again to the classical gazlan, and emphasizes that the gazlan's repentance process must involve his completely dipossessing himself of what he had stolen. This is true even when he is a part owner in what he stole, as when he stole from his own father who has now died, thus bequeathing at least a portion of the stolen object to the person who is the gazlan!
Mishna 11 deals with how a gazlan repents when there is no one to whom return the stolen property. (The example is a convert who has no Jewish heirs, and who has died before the gazlan made the decision to repent.) The Mishna describes an alternative procedure that can afford the gazlan his sought-after repentance.
The second half of Mishna 11, as well as Mishna 12 discuss what happens if, in a case such as this, the gazlan himself also dies before he has fully completed the return procedures that effect his repentance. Do the funds that the gazlan had dedicated to his repentance procedures now fall into the inheritance of his heirs, or do they "go forward" even posthumously?
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