Over time, having reached a certain level of fame, one might say becoming famous on the forum, people may experience changes in behavior because we all change and nothing remains the same. Views on familiar things, thoughts and attitudes towards everything also change, which can result in changes in the manner of communication, as well as in the social circle. This is the well-known effect of “star fever” - having reached a certain level of heights, people move away from their previous circle of people. I have no idea what happened to Ratimov’s account (I’m not going to justify or blame), but your assumptions alone will not be enough. More substantial evidence is required to confirm the transfer or sale of an account.

So let's make a sum-up of recent events:

- this topic exposes all Ratimov / Symmetrick's shenanigans from past years
- many DT and non-DT users distrust him or stop trusting him and, eventually, he is kicked out of DT and his DT strength goes from +13 to -9
- he starts a mass purge of his old posts and topics, possibly some with plagiarism evidence, involving also in his actions the 2 Russian mods which he fools into becoming his garbage men, until theymos puts a stop to this (it was too late anyway)
- he deletes all his left feedbacks, retracts all his support for flags and wipes his Trust list
- stops posting in international sections and resumes only to Russian local board
- stops earning merits with lightning speed; stops sending merits with lightning speed (if you check his merit activity you can see that lately he sent some merits at intervals of ~one week)
- changes his name
- changes his email and password.

What do all these seem like?