Why are characters permitted to be sold for platinum here?

[President]

It's also worth mentioning that SOE/Verant used to perma-ban any account that they thought was sold/traded/changed hands. They seemed to let changes on your account info to slide, but if you ever called them up asking about it, ban hammer.

I used to do a trade/buy/sell accounts back in the day, and there was always the occasional shadester who would steal the account back. Every time it happened I called up SOE with the account info and my info that used to be on the account and they would ban it. I wouldn't request they ban it, just say I bought/sold/traded and it was stolen and they would go, well sorry, we aren't giving it back to you, just banning it.