The error message claims that an account has not existed or has been deleted long ago, not "you violated our ToS and are permabanned no appeals kthxbye". Assumi

The error message claims that an account has not existed or has been deleted long ago, not "you violated our ToS and are permabanned no appeals kthxbye". Assuming this recovery attempt was started within whatever Google considers that short time, it implies something else is happening. One possible guess would be the account getting hacked, somehow moved to a different address, then deleted. (I have no idea how primary e-mail addresses work for Google/Gmail accounts, except that what used to be a standalone YouTube account got merged into a Google account which once I created a gmail address for it suddenly had a different primary e-mail address, so there are ways for stuff like this to change and "brand accounts" complicate it further on YouTube).