I came to the same conlusion lasy year. All his assets include the site and patreon page and are worth of nothing. He have no skills to develope the VN. Someone, hired by Aorrta did develope it in fact. Otherwise we would have seen updates long ago.
This is the same thing that lead some people to believe that aliens helped with building the pyramids. If you spend too much time thinking about something, wacky ideas will start coming to mind.
No, he's not hiring a "ghost developer", he's just lazy. Patreon rewards laziness so there is no incentive on crunching, which we need so much right now.
I mean he could've been struggling with personal issues, some people attract trouble more so than others, especially during pandemic, shit happens.
But i don't think he's a greedy goblin trying to get away with as much money as he can, the potential is there, he's not breaking a bank right now but he could if he applied a little bit of discipline to his work.
So far he always delivered, just a "tiny bit" too late.