Cliff has not replied to the report on PayPal nor has he responded to my Skype messages. There is a good chance he is in a place with no Internet, or dead.
I doubt it is either of the two, but it is more likely the latter. With the way they are attempting scams at large sums of money I wouldn't be surprised if he was on many people's bad-side. They probably realize their scheme is falling apart, the partner is refunding payments or witholding forwarding funds, etc. It might be the case that the scammer got a little bit of money in their bank account and they found this as their time to exit and disappear. I feel bad that the partner is on the hook for this nonsense, but hopefully it gets handled reasonably well.
OP's partner refunded my $3500 today, said he hasn't been able to contact the OP (Cliff) for several days and now believed it was a scam. Refund is in pending status currently.
That gives me a lot of faith that the partner isn't in on the nonsense. If this is the case I would expect to see everyone that sent funds to the partner to get their money refunded shortly, especially if they get in contact with them. Where have you been discussing things with the partner? Others may be interested in this information if they have payments sent out and are unaware of how to proceed towards their refund. You would think that if the partner was involved with the scam that $3500 would be too much for them to simply refund and pass up.