Well this is certainly a bizarre story. As I'd never heard of Defector, I checked around to see if a more familiar news source had anything about this. AP News has a story about the deal, though it mentions nothing about the questionable existence of Color Star.
This is an interesting mystery that I don't really have the resources to investigate.
You can usually at least try to see any wiki information and about us info for a site or resource. Those are both available for Defector which show it is credible, former employees of Deadspin:
You could say it might be even more credible than other places since it is employee owned. A small trend of modern media sites like https://Clickhole.com which was bought from being The Onion subsidiary, both owned by the same new bad parent company as Deadspin. Except for Clickhole I believe Cards Against Humanity bought the site and then let it be employee owned. Even cooler!
Deflector was created by the writers of Deadspin, a sports site owned by gawker, when the new boss of Deadspin told them to stick to writing about sports and not broader issues.
Deadspin could have been that, but management decided chasing profits mattered more than reputation, so the reputation left and founded Defector. I don't even like sports, but I listen to their podcast.
This is an interesting mystery that I don't really have the resources to investigate.