The idea sounds totally feasible, and is working by the looks of it.
out of interest, did you look for a site in the same niche or with a particular backlink profile, or was you literally just looking to water down the backlink profile with random anchors?
please keep the thread updated over the next few weeks, interested to see how this pans out.
im currently trying it the other way around - 301'd my penalised site to a new non-penalised domain, to rid myself of the penalty.
if that doesn't work, I'll try this method.
also, thanks BB for your comments on doing it the other way round, good to hear someone else having some success from that.