I'm not a lawyer, but I don't think you can just sell your company to someone else and divulge yourself of the commitment to repay what's owed or supply the goods as promised.
Maybe the people who have paid can't go after the new owners, but they sure should be able to go after someone.

If I had laid out 5 grand, I'd have visited a lawyer when I heard about the new ownership to figure out who is really liable to pay me back, and what kind of time frame I'd have available to take action.

The only thing that makes any sense to me about the new investors resurrecting it instead of letting it go under is that more than likely it would have resulted in a long process of sorting everything out, and what they did instead seemed like the easier/quicker path forward.

Call me the eternal pessimist, but big money corporate investors being overly concerned with doing the right thing by "the little guy" isn't a story you hear very often.

It will be interesting to see how it all plays out in the long run.