The first thing I think of when seeing this kind of "multiline match in file" problem, is the .. operator. Just as an alternative here's a demo of how you could do this, in rather few lines: 
use strict;

my %profiles;
{
    my $id;
    while(<DATA>) {
        if (my $count = ((($id) = /^profile\s+(.*?)\s*$/) .. /^END/)) 
+{
            unless($count == 1 || $count =~ /E/) { # not first or last
+ line in group
                /^(\S+)\s+(.*?)\s*$/ and $profiles{$id}{$1} = $2;
            }
        }
    }
}

use Data::Dumper;
print Dumper \%profiles;
__DATA__
... (data as in the root post follows)

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In reply to Re: greping inside a file by bart
in thread greping inside a file by samy1212

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