The only starting build that truly sucks is one that’s heavy on Charisma, and then only if you didn’t intend to train a whole bunch of Trade and Leadership skills. Intelligence and Memory are important for knowledge-type skills, particularly the Learning skills that boost your attributes and thus your training time for all skills. Perception and Willpower are important for combat skills. But any character can learn any skill, it’s just a matter of how long it will take.
Probably he set a bunch of region-wide buy orders. CCP won’t care - they encourage dirty tricks as long as it’s not specifically against the rules. Whenever you sell something from a station, you automatically get the highest offer that is available to you. If this guy is spamming lowball offers everywhere, and you try to sell and you get his, that means that no one else was offering a better price where you are anyway. Green bars on the Buy list indicate offers that are valid at your location.