Sounds like it is the Jaina gold farm 2.0. Basically she dropped similar amounts of gold (city boss amount being a, well, city boss), at the time they banned the players for abusing her she would near insta-respawn due to being a major quest giver.
This looks like either Blizzard messed up in picking which template to make this guy from, and didn't adjust it correctly for his role in the game. As far as I can tell he is flavor and not quest so he won't be a disruption like Jaina. Still, it looks like either Blizzard has his gold too high or his respawn timer too high to be intentional.