Methods to reset a Google account

Ok so here's what's happened. I bought a Google Play account from a dude from freelancer. And I have changed pretty much everything on the account. The recovery email, the phone number, the password, the security question, the address. Pretty much everything. But it looked kinda fishy since the account looked like his personal one. Had tons of emails from elance and other sources.

Anyway he asked me if I could reset the pass since he needed some of the mails, I told him gimme a mail and I'll forward all the mails to that. He agreed and said he'll give me an email later and that's that. This morning I wanted to log into the account to upload apps only to see the message: "The password on this account was changed 14 hours ago". I tried to reset it only to see that he changed both the recovery email and the phone number.

My question is how did he do it? There is the option to verify your identity if you don't have access to either recovery options and give them 5 email addresses of people you sent/received mail to, and 5 labels you made on gmail yourself. And afterwards you can put when you started to use different google services. And that's that. I don't see any other way he could have reset the account. Can I somehow get it back? Or is it gone for good? I have opened a Paypal dispute. And he has of course deleted me from skype so I can't even message him there. Any suggestions would be great.

well if you will get your money through dispute.
then forget it.

I'm asking since I will need more of these accounts and I want to know how I can protect myself. I was thinking of making the google account myself and then let them do their job and once that is done change everything so I can prevent this from happening again. Could turning on the 2 way verification after I have received the account back and it's approved work? It should block them out of the account. Tough I don't know if it will keep them from reseting the account somehow.

try to ask them to create the account with fresh info..
like new email account etc. so they can't have the opportunity to get it back, because it still less recovery info in the account.

hmmm.. ok will try that .. but do they have an option to reset the account somehow even when it's fresh? I mean I'm really curious how the dude did this on this account. Anyone have any suggestions?