Trinidad and Tobago Romance Scam

I believe that an acquaintance of mine has been taken in by a romance scam based possibly in Africa though with some connection to Trinidad. The details I have are unfortunately a bit incomplete. He was contacted presumably on a caribbean singles/dating website of some kind about a month ago and began exchanging e-mails and texts. The country codes of the texts were from Nigeria.
I am not exactly sure of how the e-mail exchange went, but the story was that she was a younger woman from Trinidad with an estate on the island looking for an older man. I believe that he questioned the veracity of her story, and when challenged she offered for "her estate" to buy him a plane ticket to Port-of-Spain. He took her up on her "estate's" offer and has actually flown to Trinidad. I assume this is the hook for the scam, because tickets to Trinidad run fairly cheap and would be a minor investment for someone looking for a larger, longer-term payday. My question is if anyone has heard of such an elaborate romance scam? Could this possibly have an end game, or is it more likely to be a set-up for a "sugar daddy" type situation that is unfortunately all too common in the Caribbean. I have worked extensively throughout the region, and have witnessed many unfortunate situations of exploitation, both by and of Caribbean women. Thank you for your help

A bit of an update on the situation. He is still in Port-of-Spain and the presumed scammer has not yet met with him physically (I assume this will never happen because they do not really exist). However, he again challenged them after repeated warnings from family and friends (me included) that it is a scam. They then wired him $400 (an odd amount to me) via Western Union. Still wondering if anyone has heard of or experienced such an elaborate scam and if they had any information or insight about it.

They then wired him $400 (an odd amount to me) via Western Union. Still wondering if anyone has heard of or experienced such an elaborate scam and if they had any information or insight about it.

Yes, basically the money will have come from the victim of a scam not the scammers pocket. Usually they will send an amount of money and ask them to wire some of it back to them giving some excuse as to why the money couldn't come directly to them. They may just let him keep this first initial 'small' payment to make them look legit.

He is being set up as a money mule, basically he will be given information to pick up money from the victims of varying scams by Western Union/Moneygram or similar service, later on he may be asked to use his bank account to receive payments. He will be told that this money has come from payment for legitimate goods or services which, of course, is a lie. The scammer will send his victims the information to send the money in your friends name and he will pick up for them. This protects the scammer when the victim realises he has been duped. When they report their loss to the police they will say they sent the money to your friend. So it is your friend the police would come looking for when following up the report.

In a nutshell he is laundering stolen money and being used as a barrier between the thief and the victim.

Thank you for the reply. Judging by some of his recent texts, I believe this could certainly be the case. He has mentioned that he would "never send any money" but would certainly accept it if it was transferred to his bank account or through Western Union.

Did they give him any reason as to why they were sending him the $400? He needs to be careful (and by careful I mean stop) accepting stolen money as it will get him into big trouble. The following links might be an eye-opener to him.

http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/new ... 864442.ece

http://www.southbendtribune.com/news/ar ... 9f0b2.html