Dude's dashboard

I tried what jas said, logged into iChat to fix a problem I caused accidentally (and could not have prevented):

I have multiple AIM accounts. I don't want people to be friends in all of them (this way I can take certain accounts offline to look at a shorter list), and saw some people in "Recent Buddies" group which should have been there. Right clicked the account, clicked Get Info, and switched to the Account Settings tab. The list of nicks/groups was short, as in it was 0 (the wrong account was selected in the account dropdown list). Switched to the proper account, and put the user in the correct group, and closed the window.

Oddly, the user's account didn't move. So, I opened it up again, it had switched back to the 'top' account (I don't think there's a way to change the order) and this time, the user was now listed in "Recent Buddies" for that top AIM user. This confused me, so I switched to the account in the dropdown list in which the person is actually a buddy under, and they were listed as being in the correct group.

So, it appears Adium (1.3 b3) is adding users to other accounts when using the get info window. I'm pretty sure I've seen this happen before, but I've never so fully detailed it.

Back to iChat:
Anyway, it looks like Adium did not push this update to the server, because the user isn't listed there at all.

Try deleting them using the official/mainline client for whatever service your contacts are using (ie: ICQ, MSN, AIM, etc.)

It's not optimal, but in odd cases where these things occur, it can be the only solution.