Legendary
lyka wrote in the
Russian section that he has sent 50 merit to his wife
lybship53 because he wanted to make her a "deserved present for her experience, age, enthusiasm and persistence".
Should also be said that
lybship53 has been banned for plagiarism.
If all of that is true, then yeah that's a case of merit abuse. There's no way you should be giving your "wife" (which I highly doubt is the case, but who knows what goes on in Russia) as any sort of present or incentive or whatever. People shouldn't be giving merits to their friends unless they make outstanding posts, and even then it's a very gray area.
If lybship53 has been banned there is a good chance lyka is simply an alt that should be banned too...
I would agree with that only if you could really prove those two accounts are alts. They might actually be husband and wife caught up in a pathological relationship whereby both of them are spamming on bitcointalk, abusing the merit system, and plagiarizing. If they wound up robbing liquor stores sometime in the future, it wouldn't surprise me.
The Jonezhols and kalunomics accounts don't seem to be abusing anything, but who knows. There's just not enough evidence to tag them even if Theymos didn't state that he doesn't want minor merit infractions punished via the trust system.