Am I stupid? How is this in any way confusing?

I kept re-reading this line and it made no sense. All I need to do to claim ownership of a project is merge a pull-request? Do I own Laravel because I’ve gotten a pull request merged? (emphasis mine)

Merging a pull request and having a pull request merged are two completely different things, and one very much requires you to own the project or have contributor rights to it. Which is exactly what the scammer is looking for proof of.

How was the author confused by this? Or am I somehow the dummy here?