He changed the name and removed everyone from the friends section. He has all the same games and same play times, same everything, it is most certainly him. I can link the account, if wanted.
Is there anything I can do to help? My friend emailed steam and sent them some info.
Not really. Other than wait on Steam. And they will do something about it. I assure you.
If your friend has any credit cards or other financial information on his account I would strongly advise he does some form of temporary lock on them. Other than that just wait for steam to reply.
The credit cards get removed when transfered, the only way I've herd of hacked accounts is through secret questions(most likely someone on his old friends list) if he acceses his old email he can revert the password back to the old one.
He most likely has a keylogger on his machine format.
Actually you're supposed to have evidence of purchasing a game from what I remember, they usually (or used to) give you a receipt whenever a game was purchased from which point you would send to steam support and the account would be reacquired.
He formatted his PC before this happened.
One of the reasons everyone to use the two step authentication with Steam. It's a security option, the hacker will have to have the email hacked too. You use different passwords on Steam and your email, right?
[URL=http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/13/steamguard.png/][IMG]http://imageshack.us/a/img13/7200/steamguard.th.png[/IMG][/URL]
people pick them up quick.
umm...., *goes off to change email pass*
Er... *goes off to change email, facebook, yahoo, steam, kotaku, xbl, psn, and icloud passes*
goes off to change bassfires passwords too.
If he has PoP (Proof of Purchase) he will be able to get it back within a few days if Valve contacts him back.