Or he just updated his trophies. I am assuming you are going by PS3trophycard.com? If so, he may not be paying for an auto-updating account. Never mind. Top 100 get free premium. And even then you have to synch your PS3 trophies online.
I'm watching that ranking few times a day (I love numbers...) and he was updating his status, further more there are players who did not update their status for few days now and they still have their level moved up.
I understand you are anti trophy whores but as I said before - you should try to understand normal, casual players who happen to like trophies idea - for example me - I always loved RPG games, statistics (yes - numbers) and I have welcomed trophy system with smile on my face, I only play games I want to play but still - getting trophies shows my dedication and which is the most important it is kind of a marker for time I have spend playing all games.
The best example is Platinum trophy for GTA4 - getting that requires A LOT of time and I would not get it if I didn't like the game and the HS mission in particular - necessary to do over and over again for this trophy - one must finish that mission about 1200 times to get that trophy - for some people it is extremely boring for others it is not (player #1 did it 56 000,00 times !! ) - I am doing it because I like challenge represented by flying a Helicopter as fast as it is possible - I started with landing a chopper around 2 minutes after start now it is 1min13s and I know I can better and I would like to be better - and if I can get Platinum in the process I am happy and motivated.
I wonder from which level the change has been done - 15th ?
EDIT: It seams nothing changed and next points per level amount is 8000pts - at least till level 22 - I do not know if it was the page software or whole PSN software that wasn't working - I mean players had points amount sufficient to level up but either PSN or the page software did not show that progress.
19 - 72 000
20 - 80 000
21 - 88 000
22 - 96 000
Just my assumption.
And if points amount changes for +2k every 6 levels we could have something like:
23 - 104 000
24 - 110 000
25 - 120 000
26 - 130 000 etc