I suspect there's a simpler takeaway than what most comments are suggesting:
Don't spend substantial amounts of money (based on nominally promised funding) before the checks have cleared.
Another possibility--and I have no idea if this might be the case here--most of the grants here where I work use "drawdowns." Specifically the granting agency awards a grant of $X for whatever you said you were going to do with it in the grant application, but they don't actually give you any money. So you start spending money on the project, and carefully accounting it, and usually every month you sum up everything spent, and issue a drawdown request for the funds spent. The granting agency then cuts you a check and you mark those expenses as reimbursed. This means that if the grnating agency goes belly up, there is a possibility you could be out real funds that you spent and are expecting a reimbursal.