It's not just about proving who's a bot but more of a sting operation where not only do they have to catch the bots committing the acts but also the masterminds behind it all. It's like a web Much like copration have upper management, middle management, lower management, maintenance department, customer service, retail etc etc, it goes down a list and botters as the bottom of the barrel.

Ban a bot then what? It's not so much of a big deal cause you just make another one and start over, the bot doesn't hold the money nor the trades, they just produce the money and send it off to another person.

I wouldn't be surprised if they went this far to hide their gil funds. For one it's somewhat easy to launder money because of the Market Ward. The free market of being able to pick what item you want to buy allows RMT to easily spread their money out and give it to "legit" looking players.

In XI this wasn't possible but it was still attempted via selling really stupid items for a ridiculous amount so if you suddenly saw an item bought for 50mi odds are it was an RMT exchange.

With XIV though it's a lot easier, as mentioned laundering the cash is as simple as this.

-Bots get money

-Another group sets up retainers to sell certain items for x amount, potentially items that rarely sell and are easy to make, to a point where the history would either be washed away fast without anyone noticing the odd exchange or something a person would never check price for.

-Item is purchase and honestly they could do this process over and over again just to muddy the deception of who is and isn't RMT. Once the gil goes through the Market Ward it's harder to catch because it webs out so knowing who is and isn't RMT becomes a tricky task.

-When they catch the one with the gil they then have to go down a line of how the gil came to be so you have Player Z, that goes back to Player M, back to Player C, Back to Player N, Back to player A, back to player C and finally to Bot 1

Because of the potential ease of being able to launder around money in the above situation banning a bot is a useless waste of resources because they can easily get the gil out of their hands or even the materials they've gathered before being banned. If they are part of a FC they could potentially drain out their inventory every 2hrs so that even if they are banned all that's lost is the time spent leveling, their items are safe in the FC chest.