Friend spending $3,000/month on a girl he hasn’t met

As the title suggests, I have a friend who’s been « seeing » this girl for several months. He was secretive about the whole thing, and it came to our surprise when he brought her name up. Only a first name. Over time, he’s given us more information about her and how abusive she is but she still makes him the happiest he’s ever been. He unfortunately deals with heavy depression, but doesn’t want to do anything about it.

Fast forward to this week and he’s been complaining about money. He does this frequently and I’ve tried to help through guidance over the years but that only works for a bit till he falls back into his bad spending habits. Well, this time he was speaking about his « girlfriend » and how much she wants from him. He’s gifted her money, jewelry, and trips while he’s getting further into debt.

One of my friends just discovered that he’s spending on average $3,000/ month on her while not ever meeting her.

This is what stumps me about this.

– Her account has over 50K followers on IG, but was only created in November 2024

– She gets enough comments on her photos but many of the profiles and comments seem off

– She responds with videos of herself to people on more than one occasion

– She apparently lives several hours from us (in Canada) but refuses to meet up with him

– She has a crypto pushing scheme that she endorsed and has lately been trying to backpeddle with the amount of hate she’s been getting towards it since it crashed

– She apparently has sent him explicit content, but all the money he does send her is through untraceable ways so she doesn’t have to pay taxes

I’ve watched a lot of cat fishing scams on YT and how they work and so many of these signs point to that, however she has countless videos of herself in the same room. (Looks like a small apartment honestly) This gets me a bit confused if she’s an actual person who’s just trying to take advantage of someone online.

My question for you all is, do you think this sounds like a flat-out scam with fake people? Do you think it’s a scummy person who’s just taking advantage of vulnerable people? Or do you think this is a Findom situation where my friend is too embarrassed to admit it. (I must also add that it looks like she’s really into the goth scene if that adds anything to this)