Who the fuck is this guy?
Going from 0 to 10k in a matter of days is a normal on a good campaign. If there is a daily cap / initial cap, its up to the AM to communicate the cap to to the affiliate or to have that information available on the offer page.
Starting out slow will not "cover your ass", especially when leads are getting reversed weeks down the line . On some networks, I've got offers that are on net 60 and I'm still waiting to be paid for traffic from August. That's part of the game. The only time leads should not be paid is if there is proof of fraud. Otherwise, if an advertiser doesn't cover I'm done with that advertiser and if the network then doesn't cover, I'm done with the network.
OP, your "friend" probably sent fraud traffic. Its pretty unlikely commissions got reversed because "leads didn't back out" and if this is really the case (and the offer didn't mention anything about some type of longer term validation), he needs to keep pushing azoogle until he gets paid. Talk to some advertisers, many will tell you that they always have to pay unless they can prove fraud, and even then some networks will ask them to pay or risk losing other traffic because networks hate this shit.