Okay it wasn’t as brazen as the post title suggests. But yes, it’s a real life datapoint of asking for an upgrade (that was probably deserved) and getting it!
Back at the end of January, when AA opened up premium award space to Europe pretty widely, I jumped on it to book a business class class ticket to Ibiza, SFO-JFK-LHR, LCY-IBZ as part of a summer Europe trip. My friends were going on the same trip, so I encouraged them to do so as well. Except for the first statement on their Citi AA cards hadn’t closed yet so they didn’t quite have the miles!