They did have a method to recover their account that they tried, though - they said that they used the account recovery codes, but that they were rejected. (Those would be the codes that Google gives you when you initially set up 2FA.)
Sorry, I meant an external recovery method. Another e-mail address or a phone number.
When I first got the account, my cell phone was a recovery method. Later in life I imported the cell into google voice... thus when the recovery codes failed, there was no other option.