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You should be fine if you or your family/friends don't click on your ads. Keeping an eye on your stats and being aware of your normal click activity is always good in case you notice a huge jump at some point.
As for Google waiting until the $100 dollar mark before disabling accounts ... that's a possibility. I've read about it happening quite often so maybe there's something to it. Whether the publishers were innocent or not is another matter. I tend to doubt it.
Unless you have a huge amount of traffic, don't expect to get rich. You might make a little something at first and then comes the smackdown (aka: smartpricing).
Oh, and don't join click scams or put AdSense on an account that's been banned (like a website you've purchased or a domain you've just bought). But don't expect Google to tell you if the site has been previously banned because they won't. It's all a big (guessing) game and guess who has the advantage?
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