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From your list:
185 users have 10 Merit
20 users have 11 Merit
13 users have 12 Merit
10 users have 13 Merit
As expected, the majority of the list has exactly 10 Merit, which makes it very likely they don't really deserve it. Comparing to the number of users with 11 Merit and more, I would exact at most 30 users with 10 Merit. That would mean 5 out of 6 bought their Merit. <...>
Yes, the grouped distribution certainly shows the 10 Merit group as outliers of the surrounding norm, although I did somewhere post that multiples of 5 are much more likely to be given in TX than the surrounding numbers (i.e. 10 is much more likely than 8,9,11,12) , with the exception of 1,2 and 3 sMerit TXs if I recall properly what I wrote.
The issue is really using this to prove with certainty rather that probability, and then the fact that the penalty is red-tagging at most unless ties to other offences can be made or connections to fraudulent alts. I went through a couple randomly and it’s not easy to discern. A few of them had positive trust of a kind, another was awarded by a legendary also with quite a bit of trust, that awarded 10 sMerits to multiple accounts, etc.
