I don't know anything about this situation, but i do know there is a dealer on Boat Trader.com that sells Mercruiser Power packages, engines/drives nationwide from Boca Raton Fla, I think it is. Also if you look in the classifieds on ***boat.com you will see Victory Marine sells drives, transom brackets and other drive/engine combos too.
I don't know if Merc establishes sales territories or not...but this seems suspect to me...