A lame excuse isn't going to hold up in court. Imagine you raised $100K to make some cool gizmo but instead buy your self a sports car, the fact that you never had any intent to even try to make the product is going to be really obvious. If you actually spent enough of the money raised on the project to convive a judge that you weren't running a scam, then you not going to have enough left over to really be considered a scam.