Should have told the hackers in 2015, maybe they wouldn't have bothered succeeding.
Often those type of accounts have posted mainly in spam mega-threads and when they get deleted, the user's post count and activity are reduced / can be to even to 0/ but the merit are still there.
I've seen a newbie with 500 merit, I don't remember where but definitely not a hacker.
You can check them out yourself:
I honestly think the account holders made the decision to wipe the accounts for potential sales in the future. They likely had plagiarism or some other banable offence that they wanted covered up.
Now they can sit back advertise they have an account with true hero potential, and probably Smerit.