Another person seems to have left the forum because their reputation was ruined for something unrelated to scamming.
~snip~
I am still able to conduct the amount of business I wish to conduct, under the circumstances that are acceptable to me, and as such, I continue to participate. Someone else who is unable to conduct business with their negative trust is not going to continue to participate.
We differ on what could be related to scamming. Account sales fall well within my realm of shady/scammy behavior. They're a risk many people are not interested in tolerating. In the end it really only affect those who buy the account and come here to earn. That user could still conduct business here if they chose to try, there are even some campaigns taking red trust members. Unfortunately for them they didn't do their research, tried to take the easy way out, and it didn't work out for them.
I will also point out that it wasn't their reputation to lose.
The thing is you are not stopping anything by giving negative trust to those who have purchased accounts, you are only forcing people who are willing to do this to go to greater lengths to cover it up.
The OP did not fully understand that he is liable to get negative trust if it was found that he purchased his account. However he did (say he) have the private key associated with an address associated with the account, so he could "prove" he is the original owner, even though he is not. He also did not change the email address, and only changed the password once, so he reasonably was not going to get "caught" using a purchased account unless he admitted it.
The above is the problem with tagging these people. You are forcing them to take sufficient measure so that you really can't tell they purchased their account. If someone were to try to do something nefarious with a purchased account, they will have all the proof they need to demonstrate they are the original owner. On the other hand, if purchased accounts were not routinely tagged, there would be no need to sell private keys and change passwords minimal numbers of times, so it will be more obvious you are not dealing with the original owner.
You are also giving a false sense of security that all sold accounts will be tagged.
aTriz for example was a purchased account but he "just so happened" to "slip through the cracks" of those tagging sold accounts, and he went on to do some bad things.
Also, according to the OP, he paid $200 for his account, which effectively serves as a bounty that he will not go around causing actual damage, or posting crap, otherwise he will be banned or prevented from participating in most signature campaigns.