the little guy with the PR7 / 8 selling the odd few links will be extremely hard to track down .. nearly impossible... how are google going to determine if 3 links on a pr8 homepage are paid for or just referal ...
i'd say there aren't many "little guys" with PR7/8
also - it wouldn't be hard for google to recognise them at all - after all - why would a PR8 site want to link to another site that noone else with similar pageranks do?
matt sounds a nice bloke, would be intrested to hear what he told you