There have been very limited instances / numbers of airlines that have allowed proxy flyers - whether by design or by laxness and error. But generally, to earn status qualifying or redeemable miles from a particular flight, one must actually fly that flight. That was in 2001; those loopholes are most likely shut tight.
Steve Belkin was in trouble with the law. It was 2001, and agents from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration wanted to know why he’d hired 20 Thai farmers to fly four times a day, every day, for six weeks straight between the cities of Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai, only 80 miles apart in the infamous Golden Triangle, a hotbed for heroin smuggling. Sufficiently scared, Belkin showed them his spreadsheet—it was all part of a plan, he explained, to earn five million frequent-flier miles. For only $8 per round trip, his employees were racking up miles he then processed legally through Air Canada, a fellow Star Alliance carrier that recognized his staff as “super elites,” earning fistfuls of free business-class tickets to take them anywhere in the world.
Link to View from the Wing story