The moral of the story is that you may get merits or survive by these artificial tactics but one day you will be caught and all these efforts of your will be in vein. If it more better to spend your time and efforts in writing your own posts without trying to be over clever and slowly you will move up.
I think if it is your passion to write and post you will rank up more quickly than if your only motive is to get merits for earning money.
In other words, whatever dishonest things you do in darkness or when you think no one is seeing shall one day be revealed or exposed. Obviously most of the merit abusers have only one motive here of earning money not knowing that acquiring knowledge through try to learn, helping others and being a good member here in the long run has even much better benefits.