From reading that, it looks like it was a fraudulent claim. The clue is that the photographer is no longer on Unsplash. So, this seems to be one of those cases where a photo was fraudulently uploaded to Unplash.

I'm pretty sure Copytrack are wrong in their interpretation of Unplash's terms, too. It wouldn't even make any sense. Many of the images on Unsplash are of people, and images of people are popular because faces catch people's attention, because humans are interested in other humans. It just would not make any sense for Unsplash to label their photos of people as free to use but then have something buried in their terms that says that it excludes images of people.

That would be like building a motorway that doesn't allow lorries, but not making that clear to people until they are caught driving a lorry on the motorway. If images of people are not free to use on websites, Unsplash should make that clear on all images of people. But then why have images of people on Unplash at all? Because the very purpose of Unsplash's images it to use them on websites.