I admit, I have unintentionally cheated by reading something wrong or thinking something worked the way I wanted it to, but it turned out that was not the case. But in those cases, the second I saw the truth laid before me I stopped "cheating". Most of my group has done similar things, although with one of them I feel he's more in the actual cheating region than simply misreading or recalling incorrectly.
I have never, when faced with an immutable rules text, simply ignored it or did the contrary. What's the point of optimizing within the rules if you're just going to break them anyways?