Hey everyone! My boyfriend experienced this same thing just this morning and he was furious.
FB made another account of the SAME NAME and SAME EMAIL but with only 5 friends and no profile photo... He couldn't access his first original account and we seriously angry at FB.
So I went through my wits to try and find out the problem. After 2 long hard hours, I suceeded :) This is what I went through:
RESETING PASSWORDS = MASSIVE FAIL.. This does not get you anywhere...
CONTACTING FB SUPPORT = EVEN BIGGER FAIL 'CAUSE THEY DON'T DO SHIT!
HAVING FAITH = trying to do all you can is what you can do.
In our situation, what I did was to access the NEWER account, where he only had 5 friends, changed the EMAIL address to one that didn't already have another FB account already signed onto it, I went to eat breakfast for about 20minutes, and then while I was eating breakfast I remember a couple of months ago I tried accessing my other social networking account with one of my emails, where they said IT ALREADY EXISTED, so I tracked back on that...
HENCE, I went on the FB homepage and pretended to sign up for another account using my boyfriends EMAIL for the original account and it also said IT ALREADY EXISTS, so I knew I had something there... I tried logging into his account using the ORIGINAL EMAIL AND THE ORIGINAL PASSWORD and VIOLA! We got in! :)
Now he can access his original account with all his friends, etc. I'm the coolest bitch aye, LOL.
EFFORT is all it takes guys, goodluck!