All these people losing their money because scammers know how to manipulate Google and it's products. Manual checking is impossible for a company which is as huge as Google.
Well, anyone with developer account can upload there with their small one time fee and other requirements, so it's pretty normal for scammers to do their motives there.
This is pretty normal for all digital distribution service, even apple/app store struggle to distinguish the scam/clones app in their platform. Those apps will still remain there, Not unless someone reports them.