I think there is a difference from being penalized from having just thin content.... Being penalized to me means google saw something really bad and gave you a penalty and if it was really bad, then you may not be coming back. Having thin content is another story, whereas your pages are given a penalty, and deranked, however that is something you can recover from by removing bad content, and filling with good, however, suchs sites that has 1000's of pages of bad content pretty much means they have to start all over again, but that does not mean google gave the domain a penalty of no return. I should know, I had several affiliate sites that had bad content, some of them never got indexed, and some of them did, however, sooner or later time caught up, then deindexed, and other then that, i could not find anything that could related to a permanet penalty... only the pages were slapped; If i had replaced them, then i see no reason why they would have not bounced back; having duplicate/thin content is a big no-no... however, if you using your domain for criminal purposes such has hosting illegal downloads, movies, or worse, then I could see google slapping a long term penalty. I would imagine google would prefer not to slap sites, but it is the only way google can get your attention in order to follow their rules, after all, you are in google-verse...If you do not rely on google for that free traffic, then hell, do what you want I guess.... fix your site, and submit for reconsideration... however all of this does take time, and if you are not attached to your domain, then setup another site, however, if you do not fix what got you in trouble, then expect another penalty in the future. Since he has not made any clear posts concerning his site. Then one could speculate that he knows exactly why he got the penalty, and maybe looking for ways to beat the penalty without fixing anything.
I am afraid I have to disagree concerning the "affiliate" part of his claim. I recently ran across an amazon affiliate site, and he had affiliate links up the ying-yang all over his site, however, his DA is 70, and his site was loaded up with high quality content from top to bottom. I disagree that he got penalized for having affiliate links. If he had nothing else to offer then yes. We know google is not a fan of affiliate sites, however, they do not ban sites just for having affiliate links. There is much, much more to this story.... As vague as he is, his story is not sound at all, however, it is starting to come together as he clues us in bits and pieces here and there....
Without seeing the site(s) we will not know. They could very well be useless thin affiliates or they could be useful content rich affiliate sites. Yes, there is very much more to this story that we are not being told.
When someone claims they got hit, and they do not give you the entire story on the very first post, then that is a very strong clue, it is called a Red Flag