Ideally he'd have been warned of how severe the punishment was going to be, before he committed the second offense.

I really dislike purge in this circumstance, because it is open to abuse. Imm char wants a piece of gear currently maxed out? Purge the guy with it. I don't think that's happened here but it opens the window to the possibility.

Purge, for me, is best suited to things like dropping link to avoid a pk. Because potentially you did that to preserve your gear. But there should be a definite pattern of only losing link when gaining advantage from doing so, before that's applied.

Or purge could be a punishment for someone that passed gear, or made an ooc gear gathering group.

The punishment does feel pretty severe given no pcs were affected by his offence. If Ind are affected, maybe explain that to him when pulling him over the first time so he understands that.

That said, everyone now knows, so everyone can now avoid this punishment for this offence.