I've found that the community typically chooses to respond or not respond quickly to "Has anyone seen this before?" questions with a pause unless they have knowledge of experience in the matter. This is likely the better of the two choices, the other would be to receive a dozen "NO" responses that would not further the search for info but it does leave the person asking the questions to wonder if anyone is reading their posts.
Then within two days of the post normally someone will respond with a - "No, haven't seen that before" to let that the poster know that its been seen and read while on a few occasions the post gets so response since no one apparently have any thing to offer. The internet as taught many of us to expect quick almost immediate responses, free and never ending access to all the information one could imagine. Unfortunately that is not always the case. This is not a direct comment about your post just one that reflects what I've at least seen since the internet has been available to the public
To your post. No have not see this done before on a pulley but have on some other parts but very rarely. Not sure if it was to correct a mis stamping or originally to render the part unusable (inventory purposes and the like). But no solid experience nor knowledge of this one from me today