Eh, I don't think this constitutes merit abuse.  Was it a lot of merits to give a newbie?  Yeah.  But those posts were actually pretty decent, and they were written in good English.  And my guess is that Dabs also agreed with what MichaelX wrote.  I don't have a problem with any of this personally. 

It's not "normal" necessarily (especially with a newbie account involved), but that doesn't mean something shady was going on.  My advice to you is to stop worrying about non-issues like this and focus on earning your own merits and rewarding posts you think are worthy.  If Dabs ever did show a sustained pattern of merit abuse, it'll come to light eventually. 

I've done it, too.  There are some members who are glaringly under-merited and sometimes I've looked back into their post histories and sought out posts to merit.  Not saying that's what Dabs did, but who knows.  All I know is there's not anything about what he did that would lead me to think he's a merit abuser.