This is pure speculation, But the appeal that looks like the owner was probably sent from a reverse proxy. Identical IP as owners + email clearly owned by a hijacker or someone who buys stolen accounts in volume, telling us the owner is likely infected with a rat. Anyone with sense who cared about their account enough to make a reddit post wouldn't be stupid enough to recover it to an email they knew would be scrutinized and they apparently had 43 accounts on in the past.
My bet would be the hacker sends appeals using the victims IP to confirm recovery information before attempting to sell an account.
That is possible, if they also have a lot of info about the account. That is why I used a mixed voice in my comment, and stopped short of blatantly calling it.