Hi! I'm the author of the story and want to note that I only asked Google why it wasn't removing the apps after their investigation confirmed a major policy infraction. By then their investigation was close to a week old.

Google confirmed that these apps were committing ad fraud, and told me that ad fraud is against Play store policy. Yet the company was going to keep the apps in the store. That didn't make sense to me. Fortunately, they reversed their position.

(Also, in case it matters, I didn't submit my story here. But I always appreciate the interesting threads on my ad fraud stories.)