And the FCA is definitely on the case!
I'm sure there will be some true believers who still have unshakable faith that the magic money train is only temporarily derailed.
Others will finally realize it was all a lie. Some of them will be angry that it stopped before they could make their fortunes, even though all of the profits they were looking forward to would have been stolen from others who deposited cash.
Some will claim that Declan is just an innocent pawn controlled by some evil Ponzi Master. I personally doubt this. A true master of the trade would have given Declan a plausible sounding excuse about not needing to be FCA registered. Instead, he came up with a lame claim of pending registration, which was very simple to expose as a flagrant lie. That sounds more like an amateur who got the idea of making himself rich via Ponzi after watching something on the History Channel about Charles Ponzi or Bernie Madoff.
The extreme rate of return for this plan also is very amateurish. Making 4% or so a monthly rate wouldn't have people throwing in 1500, but it would set off fewer alarm bells with those with significantly larger sums looking for a good rate of return. It would also have resulted in far fewer "Is this real?" questions going to the FCA. Madoff paid 10% a year and got away with it for a very long time. If he had offered 1% per week or more, he'd have been caught within a year.
All anyone needs to run a Ponzi is a spreadsheet. If you want to make it look better, hire a freelancer to port the spreadsheet data into a website. You can go with fixed returns or just type in your future returns. The variable return pre-planned method lets you write messages bragging about all time bests in advance.
The police appear to already have Declan's laptop. They will go over the records showing all deposits and withdrawals. Then a lot of ill-gotten gain will be subject to official recovery efforts.
And EVERY cent of that profit came from other people's deposits. You may want to check and see how many of your fancy purchases are still within the return period. You also should start figuring out how you'll repay the rest.
In the end, fairness dictates that all who were truly deceived should get the same percent of their total deposits.
But there will be some who knew it was a scam, but decided to promote it early for their own gains. They could be facing total confiscation of all funds related to this as well as charges for being an accomplice to a crime.