Lost cat scam?

So this cat showed up at our house a couple weeks ago. Not chipped, collar but no tag. Sweetest cat I’ve ever met, clearly been socialized with people and was not doing well on their own, very skinny and matted fur. Called around to every single shelter and nobody would take him. Everett shelter was extremely rude and basically told us to abandon it and starve it. After posting everywhere online, someone replied saying it’s their cat. Their Facebook does indeed have pictures of this cat. But they are in California. We asked them to come get him, and they said “gimme a couple days”. Few days pass with nothing, we messaged them again hey what’s up come get your cat. They ask US to put the cat on a plane to California, they said they would pay just give them our Venmo/PayPal/bank info. We said no come get your cat, and they reply asking if we need money for food or anything. We say no, COME GET YOUR CAT. Nothing… Is this a scam? This really is the sweetest cat I’ve ever met and things just aren’t adding up. Is this a scam anybody knows of? Did they steal a cat and set it loose hoping someone like us would try to help them? We cant take them as we have two very territorial cats already. For now the sweet angel is in the pir garage as we don’t feel comfortable locking them out at night. Any help would be appreciated, has anyone experienced this before? Special place in hell for people that use living creatures and empathy for profit.