Unfortunately, I do believe there are people who are willing to "pay" someone to take a cat off their hands. When living in Connecticut, our neighbor wanted to get rid of her 5 cats (hubby died and they were his cats anyway...that's the story). Anyway, she was so ignorant of the situations in local shelters that she couldn't believe that "they" wouldn't take 5 adult cats from her just from one phone call.
She knew I had worked with a shelter on Long Island and one evening called me to say that if I didn't help her find a place that would take the cats, she was going to dump them outside and close the door! And she made the statement that she would pay $150 per cat to put them in a shelter. I told her that wasn't the point. Her five cats in a no-kill shelter means that 5 cats in a kill shelter will die. Space, not money was the issue. She wasn't having it and upped her offer to $200 per cat! I was so angry by that time that within a week, I had found a place for the 4 that were adoptable and we took in Norbert. However, once the cats were safe and she had made a donation to the shelter, I blasted her and luckily we moved after that.
There are people like that out there - sorry this lady is making money off of their ignorance and the cats' misery.