This is much more than just a project blowing up. This is someone taking money for a project and failing to even produce any tangible proof that the money received was indeed going towards work of the project.
No, this is exactly what happens when a project blows up. Something goes wrong, and then sentiment turns against the project and accusations start flying.
I do PR. I'm very well aware of how quickly people perceive things to be "tangible proof" when in fact they're just misperceived half-truths and emotion.
Case in point: XC's FUDstorm at the hands of a competitor. The FUD was solidly and resoundingly repudiated (before I was part of XC), but not before most people had dumped. And they dumped because they believed they had "tangible proof" that XC was a scam. They were all wrong. The "tangible proof" (like, say items in github, etc.) turned out not to be any kind of proof, and the truth came out.