The creators of a “fake” Android antivirus application, which was bought and downloaded thousands of times, admitted that it was just a mistake and promised to refund the users. Deviant Solutions, which uploaded the app in the end of March, confessed that they never intended to scam the users on Google Play with the non-working application.
An app called “Virus Shield” shot into the Google Play paid charts and sold for $3.99. It was downloaded over 30,000 times within a week before being taken down. The app was supposed to search the phone for viruses without affecting battery life. However, it turned out that the app was only doing one thing: it changed its icon when pressed, to make it look like it was active. That’s it. When the app was examined, the developers didn’t find any code to do anything else.

A few days later, the app vanished from the store, but it remains unclear who took it down – Google or the developers. Deviant Solutions admitted that one of their developers simply made a mistake and uploaded a version not intended to be released.

The developers say that after they knew about the problem, they immediately unpublished the app from the marketplace and were going to upload the intended version, but Google Play suspended their account before they did so. Deviant Solutions said they haven’t withdrawn any earnings received from the app and promised to refund all purchases. They also added they may possibly publish the proper version of the app for free.

The application in question was pulled from Google Play before the 15th of the month, when Google usually processes developer payments. This means that Deviant Solutions will not receive any money. The tech giant declined to comment on the action it is going to take over the application.

The most interesting fact is that despite failing to protect devices against viruses, or doing anything at all, the Virus Shield became the 3rd most popular paid app on the entire Google Play store, and the most popular new app. Moreover, it somehow received high marks from users: 4.7 out of 5. Apparently, the users responded well to the “benefits” of the app: low battery usage (true!), no ads (true!), and very fast operation (if you can call it “operation”).

Users are able to get refunds for apps within 24 hours of downloading them. However, it is unknown how many of those 30,000 did so.

Im sure it was a "mistake". It was a mistake only after they got caught.