Nexon: Can and Can't.

Which brings me to the item duping. They can most likely search for items using their IDs and see what everyone has. But depending on the database they're using they might not be able to add specific conditions to search, such as, item stats. So while they can list everyone owning a particular item, they may not be able to find the duped/bugged/hacked ones without looking manually at all the current ones.

I don't know how much access they have to the database - but given they can delete characters based on some conditions (even the wrong ones) implies a fair amount. So it's not like their thumbs are tied. They just don't seem to have staff who can understand/address problems well.