How are they doing this? Pingback Trick

I was looking on ahrefs at one of my competitors and they are somehow getting anchor text on pingbacks using shortened url service. I can't figure out how they are managing to do it. Any ideas?

http://2dopeboyz.com/2010/12/22/kanye-west-g-o-o-d-fridays-collection/

The pingback is on that site. You can't see it onpage but if you search source code the link shows:

Pingback: <a href='https://***********/zxkqwk3' rel='external nofollow' class='url'>metabolic diet recipes</a>()</p> (shortening service is tinyurl)

How are they managing:

1. to get anchor text on a pingback

2. linking to a url shortener link with that pingback


I know people say pingbacks are dead and worthless, another site I found doing the same is ranking for lots of kws in my niche using hundreds of these types of links though.

Cheers!

Could be that it's really a PBN, guy with the link owns the "blog".