Hopefully, this truly never happens again for you.
It will unfortunately, happen to others again.
T2 has a 15K+ production run, so I am not sure why it was hard to locate the game, although I am unsure of the cost range you will actually willing to buy, but there was a certainly willingness to ship, so local is out of the initial consideration.

One area that would assist you in the future and primary critical step that was directly skipped was reaching out to local collectors, instead of going the process alone. This includes a courtesy inspection by another experienced collector of the game itself. I still do it regularly. This seemed absent, as I did not read every single response on this thread only circumstances.

Another fundamental step was the proper use of an invoice to include names, addresses, phone numbers, businesses, and emails. This scares some scammers (but not all) and "flippers" away from sales. Smart buyers and sellers know this is useful, not just for pinball.

Do you research on sellers, I do, especially those I have not done business before.
I am preparing to buy a WMS 1962 'World Series' pitch and bat, and just using the person's name and location of where they lived, I was able to determine: where they lived directly in personal address, all their phone numbers, family members, email addresses, work history, present employment, education, and background in the hobby all for FREE. This only took 30 minutes of my time. This did not even consider canvassing references from other collectors, technicians, and operators. The internet is a powerful tool when used properly.

In the future, I may conduct an interview and do a video to detail the process better than reading written guides, as scamming is once again on the rise due to enthusiasm in the hobby, the same as direct home theft.
Written guides will only take you so far when it comes to both evaluation of a game and individual.
People seem to disagree regarding invoices, but I reassure you it does work for many reasons.

However, not being a member PinSide is not a "red flag".
Being a member of Mr. Pinball website is not a "red flag" either.
Most of the largest and longtime collectors are not always online, online at all, or do not have time to do so.
Many do not wish to use this website.
Many older collectors still have an entry on Mr. Pinball including myself.
CL has more of its share of "flippers" (soft or hard) as much scammers.
Local collectors actually "police" CL not just for pricing but legitimacy and run people out of the sites once identified.

Best of Fortune.

You use a white pages backtrack for personal information including family members as a crosscheck for addressing.
Then you reset your search based on regional businesses for employment.
Linkin is your friend, as are other social networking sources such as Facebook.
Using Linkin you can determine education and often photos, if hits are not already acquired from a basic source search.
Many times based on a person's line of work they want to advertise anyway such as retail, consumer sales, investments, banking, or real estate.
Do another search using reference of photos for things like professional articles.
From education you can can determine more personal information and contacts.
Networking in pinball take care of the rest.

All free.
No secret squirrel decoder ring required here.

Read other posts recently on "conducting private sales" regarding importance of invoices and procedures.

If any person believes my posts are useless, place me on ignore, I will not be offended.

People do use their passports for identification more readily today based on requirements for work and other reasons than the past.
I did this for years (and still do), but I will share some important facts for the community for wisdom.
This does not mean the passport of person is a fake in itself, which upfront in this case it is, and not because of the bitter scam "conclusion".

Although I was not going to relate this point or information to the OP as it might make them feel worse, but if the buyer had done some checking they would have realized this was not "Danny Barnes". Let me share details based on experience based on this one piece documentation. People might want to read and remember this basic information for reference in the future.
In respect to the passport alone, as these are SEVEN offical reasons why this passport is a bad fake:

First, the font was changed for the name as an over the original name.
This is not the official US Government passport font, and never has been.
Look closely. This is the most obvious easy fault to spot.

Second, the passport identification is LAST name on the first block, FIRST name on the second block, followed by MIDDLE name.
Not in the reverse of "Danny Barnes"

Third, passports require FORMAL first documented names, not truncations or nicknames.
Hence, a first name should be "Daniel", unless that was truly his given name (unlikely).

Fourth, if the owner did a cross check against the passport number, they would have discovered this is not "Danny Barnes".
This requires access to US Federal database search, which I checked.
However, this same information can be requested to the the Department of State for validation.
I cannot tell you if the "real" passport holder is related to the criminal (again unlikely), and I cannot provide this information here anyway.
It will not help the OP, as the the person is most likely unrelated to the situation.
More likely the image was stolen from a website.

Fifth, the bottom of the passport identification is COMPLETELY wrong, it should state P<USA last name, first name, middle name>>>>>>
Numbers below are truncated. Again, reverse order for those that are unaware.

Sixth, if the owner did have this passport issued in Poland, and was not originally a US citizen, there are a few variances, but is beyond the scope of this posting. If he was, normally there is a CITY and COUNTRY, not just a country based on the issue at the US Embassy Consulate. Again, this makes no sense if you know the Department of State and their annotation.

Seven, the person's photo does not have proper starred watermark on the photo, which sometimes (not always) can be picked up on high resolution scans.

There are more, but I think people get the point.

In essence, this passport is a VERY poorly made fake, and the owner is clearly not from the Unites States, and has little attention to detail as a counterfeiter anyway, as if they had a real passport, they would not make these elementary mistakes.

By the nature of this scanned image, part of this passport is a security issue for the true original owner.
True, no one scans passports and would readily provide them for uploading across the internet or email, especially to unknown parties.
This is only done when absolutely required for identify verification of certain type of documentation.

My background is as a member of the US Federal Government for over 25 years.
Formerly, Department of Defense.
I have worked for the Department of State many times in my tenure.
I lived abroad for over 15 years.
I carry both a diplomatic (black), official (maroon), and standard (blue) United States passports and have required to use them regularly.

My recommendation remains again is ask for help in the future, as there are many people that could help have eliminated this situation before money was lost.
Just reach out, but please don't feed the trolls under the PinSide bridge.

I stand corrected, dark brown, I just pulled mine out.
Old versions were maroonish red brown.
Must be my old age.

IMG_20170921_121205.jpg

The key point of this is use known personal references to validate who a person is if an individual has no experience with him/her via existing pinball network market.

This is a very small niche hobby, and remiain so even after substantial growth in the past 20 years. You do not need to hire a private detective.

I 100% agree about use of escrow with sales with brokers/dealers. Wire transfers can save money, over credit card sales (2.5%) if offered, but CYA. I use it for all non secured sales, if not paid in cash.