Ahahaha.... What an idiot. He has been playing for 5 years and only had this happen now? He should of known that a couple years ago there was no penalty for flipping cans. I bet something else made him quit. If this is the worse he experienced over 5 years he is one lucky guy. In my 6 year experience of EVE I've experienced Spies that destroy alliances from the inside(actually gaining enough rank to disable POS.), enemies taking actions outside of game(crashing vent/TS servers, hacking websites.), and many more that just take 1 person to ruin 100's of other players fun. After all that I still haven't officially quit.
I still believe something else made him quit unless this was just the last straw.