I read enough.
It doesn't appear to be an outright scam against the backers because somebody is working on it. If anybody should be pissed off it's the JP guy (aka the dupe) who may or may not own the Game at this point. He definitely should refuse to do any work at all on the game until this is sorted out because if he releases the game and appleton gets all the profit from a released game and JP gets nothing.. that would be even shittier.
This seems like more a case of bad business decisions and the original kickstarter guy trying to find a fall guy like you mentioned. The game will most likely fail unless JP turns into
Cleveland Mark Blakemore but I hope for his sanity he doesn't.
Seems it's time to move onto another game and just forget about this one. Also, lessons to learn, don't donate money to a crowd-funded MMO. That has got to be the worst idea I've ever heard.