It's already happening to some extent with real people. There was an article that passed through here a while back that had interviews with ex-419 scammers. One of them was making a living by pretending to be the online girlfriend of some guy. He talked about it in much the same way. He would give him advive, cheer him up, etc. He was essentially 'farming' the guy for money. But this means that he had to deliver real value to the guy to keep stringing him along.
The kind of cool thing about that example is, provided the guy wasn't being told he'd get to meet the girl, it's just a simple value exchange, beneficial for both parties.
(So long as the advice the scammer gives is good!)
