Ah... more information from SearchEngineLand's Matt McGee:

A Google spokesperson says the site is not banned, but was removed after Google received a request to do so via Google Webmaster Tools:

The owner of this site delegated access in our webmaster console to multiple email accounts, and one of those email accounts submitted a url removal request for the site. We've emailed the site owner to check whether the site removal was an intended action, or whether the removal was a mistake.

We've also reached out to Ripoff Report for comment, but have not received a reply.

[searchengineland.com...]

lawsuit?

Hmmmm....

Could be one of two things in my opinion...

1. Disgruntled employee (or ex-employee) getting back at them

2. Marketing stunt to get the press to write about it....voila...links from news sites + visits from curious readers :)

Its back in index. Seems like ex-employee or a mistake.

It was recently reported in another thread that due to a bug in WMT, anyone could remove any site from the index from any WMT account.

I'd have thought this was a prime candidate for that sort of action (but the wording of the above release seems to rule that out).

I don't think this was a WMT bug, as that was supposedly fixed several weeks ago.

RipOffReport has very little social media penetration, or rather, HAD very little social media penetration (discount SEO forums and the like).

That has now changed. It would seem logical that this was a stunt to generate buzz.