This behavior doesn't stop you from selling an almost dead SSD. And if you sell a dead one it will be obvious that it can't be written to; that's not going to be a very convincing scam.
Sorry, clarification: "almost-dead" in this case means "on the verge of the intel software self-bricking itself" rather than the drive itself being buggered.
Based on what I read from the article it implies that at this point the drive itself MAY be ok but not reliable so the intel software pro-actively commits suicide.
Without the self-bricking you could sell a drive that has reached this point to some unsuspecting person since it ostensibly works but is unreliable, if it fails 2 months later then the seller can just deny responsibility.
Although why it 100% self-bricks instead of going into "read-only brick" mode is a good question.
