Uh, definitely.  50 merits to a brand new account for what amounts to a short shitpost?  The sender and the recipient of those merits are obviously related somehow, whether they're alts or related through a merit-buying transaction, who knows.

The main question I have is whether there will be any consequences for this, and I suspect there won't be.  There's been merit abuse going on since the start of the system, and merit abusers generally don't get tagged anymore.  I stopped tagging suspected merit abusers quite a while ago, and I don't think any DT members are making it their mission--and Theymos doesn't even want that anyway.

Fortunately this sort of thing can't go on forever because of the limiting nature of merit decay as it keeps getting sent.  So even if this member gets away with this, it's the exception rather than the rule.  It's not a huge deal IMO.