It goes much deeper than that, I researched it myself at one point.
It's on record that the find maddie fund set up by the mccanns was actually used to pay their legal expenses, and also hundreds of thousands of pounds was given by the mccanns to a unscrupulous portuguese detective agency, who not only laundered the money, but used it on booze, drugs and women in the local bars and cluds. Apparently people were phoning up the agency to report sitings of maddie, nobody would answer the phone or ever repond to enquiries because the agency was just a front, they never actually did any detective work.
What is also interesting is the warm relationship that suddenly came about between the mccanns and R Murdock. I think this is how it all became so sensationalised, because the mccanns were quickly taken under the wing of the well connected media mogul who saw and oppotunity to maximise on the story and drag it out for as long as it could sell papers. This is why the case has become such a spectacle IMO, and why some details of the case have been suppressed and others exaggerated.
I do find it a little unsettling that this case has cost the tax payer many millions of pounds with no resolution, and that the mckanns have made enough money not to ever have to work again in the process, whilst at the same time having squandered hundreds of thousands generously donated by the always nieve and compassionate general public. I think if those involved had a thread of common decency, they would let the public forget about the mistake they made in bothering to take an interest in this story in the first place.