I was one of the mods, not an admin.
I don't even remember all of the mods that were mods with me back then.
We didn't have tools to effectively neutralize board attacks, so things had to be done 'by hand' so to speak.
Nowadays, it's much better. That's why there are hardly any accounts that just sell crap (spambot accounts), or people continually causing ban evasion (there are a few but we mods know who they are and they've been rather calm in comparison to their previous incarnations).