Competitor is removing tons of his links from PBN sites is this a new thing?

I been monitoring a competitor that uses numerous domains to run a money down tactic on keywords nationwide. I am wondering if this is a new strategy to remove spam links or lessen the number of total links just to leave a few quality one left. He seems to be doing this across the board and it is not affecting his ranking the much. All of these domains were expiried domains in the same nich purchased by him or bought as the other biz was quitting. To Dupe google he ranks many websites website linking them and pretending them to be different business competeing against each other


This leads me to a second question about having more than one domain ranking for the same keyword, do you get a demotion when you have to pages rannking for the same keywords and their is a direct link between them?