Sounds like me. That whole changeover to the Money Bass was pretty sad. I felt embarrassed for Gibson. But the dollar sign truss rod cover on another Gibson, say an old ES-335, would look, dare I say it, money.
I had come across those Merc guitars a while back, and I suspect that these guys may be tapping into that. There seems to be a ghost market for guitars that get damaged or returned from retailers, and they get resold to wholesalers that deal in them. Some stuff gets stripped down and parted out, and others - like the ones from Merc - get repaired and have the factory serial number altered to void warranty.