EVE New Citizens Q&A

So I'm in a static exit wormhole today and throw out the usual scans, find the local residents POS and warp to it to see what I can see. Everything is as expected, along with about 7 empty floating ships of various makes and models.

I notice that one of the ships has what appears to be a characters name as the default ship name, so I proceed to add that character to contacts and watchlist. Then an odd thing happens. 3 of the 7 floating ships change standing indicators on my overview according to the standing I applied to that offline character.

Does this mean that this contact was the last person in those ships? Does he own the ships? What information can I gather from empty ships following an offline contacts reputation indicator on the overview?

Thanks