Ghana scam with Chicago man

by Mike
(Chicago, IL )

I was contacted by a woman named Elizabeth Oppong. She says she is in Ghana and living with her mother after her stepmother kicked her out of her house in US and this forced her to join her mother in Ghana. She needs money for buying calling cards to contact me in the US.

She wants to come to the US but doesn't want me to buy the ticket and said it's too corrupt there to make sure the ticker gets there safely. She wants me to send the money instead through MoneyGram.

Has anybody else encountered this kind of story and is this a scam?