This is indeed merit abuse but this doesn’t mean that the account who received it will benefit on it in the future. There’s no way that account can join on signature campaign or can be trusted on loans once he/she apply.
Uh....why wouldn't that person not be able to join a campaign somewhere down the line? There have been, are, and probably will be campaigns whose managers either wouldn't find out about this or wouldn't care. As to benefiting from those 50 merits, that'll certainly speed up the ranking up process as long as hashuna keeps posting and gets enough activity. I'd be willing to bet that it would take a lot longer had he not gotten those merits, since most newbies mainly post crap.
Great catch on this one, OP. Just to be clear: that post absolutely did
not deserve 50 merits, and it's pretty clear the Icefrag account has changed hands. I'm going to continue to read this thread and look into Icefrag's post history if necessary to confirm what seems obvious.