That woman was the biggest phony ever on PetTalk (and that is saying alot!)
She did not have a Phd - which was rather evident as she rarely constructed a simple sentence correctly. I don't remember now where she claimed to have taken her doctorate - but I checked because I could not believe it. (College degrees are one of the easiest things to verify.) As someone pointed out recently - if you have to tell people how educated you are - you probably aren't.
Her on-line "university" was laughably bad - offering course in magic spell casting and other such crap. Until it was shut down for non-payment.
Watching her spin her stories was interesting. She is a scam artist. I wonder how many people sent her money for her various "crisis"?
I have a letter sent to the former CEO of one of my clients. From some Asian country. Offering, because his last name, blah, blah, blah...the author of the letter will share the millions left in a bank account that belonged to Saddam Hussein. All he has to do is....blah, blah.
Same scam - different scope.
Offering part of the money if you will just help them out with this financial transaction.
I am willing to bet you if you had been able to cash that check and send her the money it would have been "lost" and FedEx or whatever would not have been willing to accept responsibility and she would have been back on your doorstep with the next step in the story.
Or you would have been responsible for the bad check while she disappeared into the night.
So maybe you are lucky to have gotten out now.