If your concern is only around the possibility of being banned - do you know if your colleagues were using the Play Store test track[1]? I am not sure if their service agreement would allow this, but apps in the test track do not require a review. It supports up to 100 users and is fairly cheap (25 USD for the dev account registration). I understand this is not what you're asking for, but if you will be working with non-technical people, this may be worth looking at it...

[1] https://developer.android.com/distribute/best-practices/laun...