I noticed that one of the scam sites is currently listed for sale on Flippa. On their listing, they even openly boast that the best way to use the site is to use its Google News status to scam Google's search results:
https://flippa.com/3500230-google-news-approved-site-with-14...
Here's a mirror, in case it gets modified or deleted: https://archive.today/Jzubr