What I'm asking is, how long has Blizzard waited to ban some of you guys? Like have you stopped botting then you get hit with a ban a year later?
Sensatus,
TLDR: Its a widespread consensus that you can get banned anytime completely up to their discretion. However a few things things to consider,
While blizzard certainly works to ban botters, it simply is not the utmost priority they have on their plates. They don't go around investigating transaction logs, zone and dungeons logs of individual characters out of the blue, and this is where the flagging theory comes into play.
Surely upon being investigated blizzard will find out
everything about an account and its nearly guaranteed at this point that it will get banned. The key it would appear then is to not get flagged for investigation by a game master. This is where it gets fuzzy as many theories claim that running multiple accounts on one IP, Install taps, MAC addresses, player reports and a endless number of other ideas as to what could cause a flag. I personally believe Blizzard doesn't have the time or care to check into IP, Install taps, other out-of-game flags
until an account is already being investigated. This just makes sense to me: I suspect after a certain number of player reports on your character that this process begins.
In answer to your question I think that if you did not get banned while actively botting, and have made it past a ban wave (check the ban report section), Blizzard has most likely not investigated your account. So in theory your account should be fine until you acquire more flags.
Hope this helps boss, I know the anxious life