Old H1B quota

[plyons1]

any advice greatly appreciated I have a candidate who issued an H1B in 2001 and came to the us to work for a company but only stayed on the H1b for 6 months and then left, since then he has been in and out of the county several times on Visa waiver status not working. He wants to apply for the H1b based on the old qouta a this visa has several yrs of unused work time, can anyone advise if they think this application would be consdered by the Uscis to work for our company based on using ( the remaining time left on the old visa ?

I have been told because he has been out of the country and also in the country not on H1b status that it cannot be considered is this true

Paul