I created a hotmail account and gained access to someones facebook

You are aware this isn't Facebook right? A2k holds no official affiliation with the megasocial network.

It's probably older unverified accounts (with changed addresses, possibly), like you said. FB wouldn't allow the creation of an account with a fake email because they send you a confirmation email if you change the email address on your account. If that bounces, they're not going to change the account.

Consider how FB runs. They have 1.2 billion accounts, and a surprisingly tiny number of employees (less than 7200 as of the writing of this post). This is everyone, including the management, people who type or get coffee, etc. Even with an army of temps, even if that number was 1000 times the number of regular employees (it wouldn't be), you can readily see that there is no way in hell that Facebook can provide individualized attention unless you are very rich and/or famous ("Let me help you with your account, Mr. McCartney.").

Therefore, nearly everything is automated. Hence what seems to have happened is probably something like -

1. Roy James (the real one) makes an account in 2007, using a good email address, possibly not even one on hotmail.
   
2. In 2008, he decides he's had enough of the FB experience. Or maybe he dies. Or maybe this is a woman with an utterly different name. Or maybe the email provider is closing up shop; it's some ISP that's going out of business. Whatever. Roy James changes the email address on the account, presumably without verification.
   
3. In the meantime, the account is abandoned.
   
4. In 2014, you snag the Roy James hotmail email that the real one changed his account info to, and then everything unfolds as you say, that you are prompted to change the password, you do, and voila, you end up with an old account.

An alternative explanation for this is that the Roy James account really does begin (in step #1) with the hotmail account you're using, and step #2 only happens in the sense that the FB account is abandoned and the hotmail account is also abandoned. Hotmail does due diligence and wipes the old information and allows you to take on a new email account which just so happens to have an identical address as an old abandoned account. FB doesn't do such a good job of due diligence and, as you noticed, hands over an old account to you.