MacGregor left London shortly before the small party of Poyais survivors arrived home on 12 October 1823—he told Richardson that he was taking Josefa to winter in Italy for the sake of her health, but in fact his destination was Paris. The London press reported extensively on the Poyais scandal over the following weeks and months, stressing the colonists' travails and charging that MacGregor had orchestrated a massive fraud. Six of the survivors—including Hastie, who had lost two of his children during the ordeal—claimed that they were misquoted in these articles, and on 22 October signed an affidavit insisting that blame lay not with MacGregor but with Hall and other members of the emigrant party. "e believe that Sir Gregor MacGregor has been worse used by Colonel Hall and his other agents than was ever a man before," they declared, "and that had they have done their duty by Sir Gregor and by us, things would have turned out very differently at Poyais". MacGregor asserted that he himself had been defrauded, alleged embezzlement by some of his agents, and claimed that covetous merchants in British Honduras were deliberately undermining the development of Poyais as it threatened their profits. Richardson attempted to console the Poyais survivors, vigorously denied the press claims that the country did not exist, and issued libel writs against some of the British newspapers on MacGregor's behalf.