Common tactic, especially on e-Bay and other online sales forums. I had a similar problem, but it was somebody using a link to one of my own hosted images for a gun they had on sale at
www.Gunsamerica.com. I considered switching the image to something less attractive as a reminder to the bandwidth thief, but didn't want to cause collateral damage. Luckily, a quick email to the individual was all it took to change the image to their own, vs. the one of my gun.
If that's why you were banned from THR, I'd at least bring the circumstances back to the moderators there for reconsideration. True, you linked to somebody else's website for an image, but you had no control of what file they substituted afterwards...