...who wants to profit by creating multiple accounts and selling to people who are desperate and lazy.
New accounts don't have any merit/Smerit so multiple accounts is not possible, but I am pretty sure they will find some way to cheat the system.
All they can do is buy some merit points from members who are selling them. Such deals might be happening outside the forum and mods will not be able to catch all those deals. However, this will automatically decrease with time. After few months, the default merits of all the members will be spent and thus they will not be able to sell their merit points.
Then we will see merit coming from merit sources mainly and it is not possible to bribe merit sources to give merit points for money as they are established members.