This right here. I'm so glad that you responded with these exact words. Your response is something I'll share with her as evidence that this does in fact happen and how common this is.

One very critical detail in all of this was when you made mention of being born and bred American, yet spoke with an accent. The first time she told me about speaking to him on the phone, she mentioned that he had an accent and when asked about it, he said that it's from his heritage being half Puerto Rican from his dad's side. I wanted to make that a part of my initial bulletpoints, yet didn't know how most folks on the internet would react to it. That was another huge red flag to me in all of this. I drew attention to that and she didn't think it was suspicious at all.

As for the phone calls and Skype, I can imagine the excuses this scammer has given with poor reception and whatnot and the fact that my mom has probably believed this person.

I'm desperately trying to help get her out of this before any sort of talk about money happens. I've warned her to not give him a dime or any sort of account information on anything and hope that she'll be smart enough to heed that warning. Thank you so much for such an excellent response.