While we're on rhetorical questions: Is it worth creating an alt-account just to post this? Both users involved are on my Ignore list already.
@OP could be targeted with the same way, probably he also own alt accounts or there were few of his merited posts are questionable. Honestly this thread isn't worth for discussion, I mean like, yeah it's merit abuse, then what?
Either the sender and receiver won't get red tag just because of merit abuse, it's different if @OP bring something like a connection of two accounts and evidence if they're cheating.