I wasn't friends with Ricky before he was banned, and honestly didn't think much of him, not that I had much to go off. After having him on Steam and talking to him about his situation and in general, I think he's a good kid who made a mistake, and that he understands that. When I say kid, I really do mean kid, as in you know. Going to grade school or whatever, studying, etc. It's easy when you're younger to not really understand the implications of things like this until you're forced to, and losing the things you've worked hard for in a game you love seems like it would be more devastating when you're an early teen opposed to being twenty-something and playing the same game. Furthermore the gain from the exploit seems fairly minimal- I can make that amount of xp in a good night, and it didn't directly hurt other players- and he was punished for it.
Let's say, hypothetically, you managed to send a message from a future time to your present self, containing lottery numbers for the next days drawing. Would you use them, even though millions of people have to grind their whole lives to get that amount of xp?