game is super awesome. GTA had the same problems at first with losing profiles. it was also because connection to the servers were lost.
In their case whenever you went online and couldnt see your character, it was because you couldnt load it from the server. so you had the option to start as a new player. If you did so. that would overwrite your old character. if you went back out of the menu and went back into the menu until connection was set up tho, you could load your main character again. Maybe this is the same problem?
A possible solution (if that were the problem) would be to always check in the main menu what your character looks like. if you got all your stuff you can continue playing. if you dont have you stuff DONT log on to another server untill you can see your main character... atleast then people would know how to protect themselfs from this. GREAT WORK PEOPLE!