All that happened there is when the GM passed it on, it got done instantly. The sad truth is GM’s we’re call center type work. You had zero power. Everything you did was PR related. You had the ability to search a players inventory for an item, you had a list of his previous sent/received mail, his AH listings. You could move him around the map and you could force disconnect a player... you couldn’t even mute a player. There was even pdf files of “wow jokes” you could copy paste to reply to people with. But at the end of the day you had no actual control. Most GM’s were minimum wage jobs and got the kind of person who does those jobs. The banning was done by more senior members of staff in accounts/billing. I imagine in your friends case he happened to either ring accounts at the same time he flagged it to get it banned instantly. Or he happened to be sitting next to someone in office who could. It wasn’t uncommon for people to call other people over to look at things on their screens because they were doing something absolutely Hilarious.
I can remember a bunch of about 15 sitting around a screen watching 4 locks and Priest standing in a tower in AV dotting everyone who ran past and watching the ticket count go through The roof.