Let's not focus away from the fact that they are collecting rewards for all those invitations. Rewards that are supposed to be spread evenly amongs miners who work really hard to keep their "human status" and look for people who are not going to waste those invitations.
They make the pot of rewards smaller for everyone else by issuing their own invitations.
I was on your side all the time until purpose of those funds was explained to me. 9000$ for only those 2 projects (that gives much more in value back to the network) is equal to 112 000 DNA (14% of this wallet) and there will be only more of them. This wallet speed up development and outsource port of it from main developers - increases amount of smart heads working for project and allow IDENA to function long after main develops will quit - just like satoshi (distribution from this wallet to developers can become automatic).
And as we can observe someone, who take care of this account is only balancing demand/supply ratio. Giving as many invitation as network needs not giving 500 invitations each epoch spamming telegram witch them.
I tried joining the Telegram to get some Idena, but gave up. It wasn't simple. People just wanted me to buy.
If you give up on project only because one random person that you've met on telegram was not helpfull than I don't want to waste my time on you.
https://idena.io/?view=faq https://idena.site/ -> this is how you learn what IDENA is and hot to mine. Not asking on telegram.