I don't know what is purpose of your post and, of course, so many same threads of other users. Spotting those activities will lead to permanent ban for those accounts or not. I guess not, simply because the current merit system has not pointed out those ones as violated activites.

Therefore, they are legal. The fact is merit system should be adjusted a little bit to control users from trading sMerits officially like those ones, which result in likely official abusement merit system.

Another thing should be considered is that whether we should have limitations on maximum number of sMerits to send or received each day for each user, and from each users to another.