Increasing your ping on purpose while playing spy. Is this a thing?

I recently saw a spy with a ping of 500+ and he almost wiped out my entire team on a single run while also backstabbing me in the face. Soon he changed to sniper and dominated some people with a ping of 10. I kept and eye on him and it didn't seem to change after that.

Was he increasing his ping on purpose? I heard that this make spy overpowered because of shitty hitbox mechanics and stuff. Even though I'm familiar with tf2's shenanigans doing this on purpose sounds really shitty. I wanted to call him out on it but wasn't sure if this is something people actually do.