20 Years of Digital Life, Gone in an Instant, thanks to Apple

A large department store sold someone an apple gift card that was likely stolen/already redeemed, apple responded by permanently closing his apple account, bricking his devices and causing him to lose access to 20 years of saved media in iCloud

Edit: in the FAQ section he says that he has backups so that's good. Main damage is that all of his apple devices are tied to the deleted account and won't work anymore