My list included all users who earned 9 or 10 Merit, including the ones who received a Merit airdrop. That explains the difference, you don't have this one for example:
89349:
erwinbit (
history)
Yes, that has to be it.
It's quite likely the Members who received 10 Merit from one user either got them from their alt, or bought them.
That's what I thought. It's a possible indicator that can raise suspicious cases (along with other patterns we could think of easily). The thing is if could effectively lead anywhere practical in terms of tagging at least, since probably more than that is needed (especially in the lower end of the merit abuse/alt chain).