Definitely not bullshit. I have a friend who was banned simply for returning a Pixel phone after accidentally ordering 2. Some automated mechanism flagged it as potential fraud and nothing worked to reverse the ban. Going to the bank to block payments, remove authorization, or God forbid, do a chargeback for the money they already took after banning you is playing Russian roulette with your Google account.
It's also the only way to stop Google from stealing your money short of going to a lawyer.
The Youtube account is banned. Google can escalate things and widen the net to ban anything and everything you have in the Google ecosystem, like a Gmail account. You can see here [0] that OP still has access to the Gmail account.
I agree there may be no other option, I'm just warning to be ready and prepare for the possible loss of "connected" (in Google eyes) accounts.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45157001