In the backup of my own forum's database, it looked like deleted posts and PMs were all still there. I'm sure someone with a huge amount of MySQL experience could go in through the database and figure out what marks a post as deleted, if indeed deleted posts remain in the database, but I seriously doubt you'd even be able to get a MySQL backup of EoFF's database at all, big as it is. At least from the admin control panel.

Anyway, yeah, EoFF definitely don't mod people without a good reason. Generally you'll find that people on staff have superiors, unless they're the owner of the site, and so they defer to those superiors. If I were to become a mod, I could technically ban everyone I didn't like, but that doesn't mean I'd actually want to do that. Even if someone really pissed me, personally, off, I wouldn't just ban them unless they'd done stuff to other members that would warrant a ban. Bannings don't occur without a good reason, in my experience. Disliking someone isn't a good enough reason.

I have a hunch that even if an admin was to do such a thing, there'd be plenty of ways to get around that - admins are pretty much all powerful as far as vBulletin control goes, but the real power goes to those who have FTP access, as they'll be able to edit what's on the site directly. Plus, as I understand it, both Scottie and Bleys regularly backup the database, so at most you'd be losing like two weeks of posts, probably. But who knows. I don't really know how admin stuff is organised here, so I'm no expert on that.