if the original owner took out a loan, nothing prevents him from creating a new account and presenting his story with possibilities of repaying the debt (judging by his previous positive ratings).
If he had the wish to repay then he would not sell (assuming the account is sold) the account to someone else. Creating a new account (which probably he already did and watching) is fine but why would he expose the new account, risk to get red tag and repay $3k? The amount seems a lot of money to him.
Behind the face of reputation, some people are scammer in their heart. I sometimes doubt those scam busters. What is their incentive?
Build an account as they are some authority figure of the community, take loan, do projects, do charity and when they think it's time to disappear, they disappear. There are many high rank users who are loan defaulter. They were active and seemed very caring to the forum members. Always active busting alt accounts, always active to aware users against scam projects. They spend their entire life busting scammers, tagging them and even leaving unnecessary neutral tag. All to achieve some sort of attention and build up reputation.
But eventually the same person scam another member when they find a good opportunity. Not long ago a charity where most of the members were from Philippine scammed around 1 BTC (I can not remember the amount but it was around this amount). The name was bitcointalk charity I guess.
Sorry for your loss zazarb. It's gone and hope for nothing.