women in the States who are the conduit for the scam money

I have a question I haven't seen answered here. All three times I tried to send money to my "friend" on the oil rig it was being sent to a woman in the States. The first one was to his nanny, that couldn't be picked up so I was to send it to a friend in SC who would get it to her for the emergency. The second one was a woman in Ohio who was supposedly the accountant who would collect the money before they would send the parts needed to repair the machine on the oil rig. When WalMart to WalMart wouldn't release the money to her, and I had looked her up and saw a mug shot and that she had been arrested for attempted robbery, I was pretty sure I had been scammed.

How does this work? How do they end up getting the money in West Africa?

OK, so let's explain. The person could be a willing money mule receiving a share for forwarding the money on to him, but there's also another option.

The scammer has multiple people on the hook at the same time. We'll refer to you as A and the "nanny" as B. He may also have C to Z

Scammer tells A he needs money due to some emergency, but can they send it to someone else (in this case a "nanny"). At the same time, he tells B that he's about to be paid for his work, but is having problems with his bank account, so would they be willing to accept the payment through theirs and then forward it to him using a money transfer service. As far as they're concerned, they're simply helping him out of a bad situation. A sends the money to B, who forwards it on to the scammer. When A realizes they've been scammed, the only information they have that's not fake is B's name and bank details. A reports B to the police and the scammer gets off scott free as no one has his real details.

Make sense?