Secondly, to answer your question, that sounds incredibly fishy to me.
Yes. I am 100% sure that they just want to scam him. It is good that he came to this forum to ask this kind of question. This is an old scam means used by scammers in the past but I think they are still using it to scam some people.
This is a very big mistake by a beginner. I'm very sure he doesn't know what he is getting into, but he got involved because of the profits he wants to make from trading. It seems he joined a trading platform that demands some money from him, and he has gone through different stages.
I'm very sure that if the money for this stage, which they are asking for, is paid, they may also ask for more money again. This is just a scam, and beginners who don't take their time to learn usually fall for scams like this. If beginners are not ready to learn and go through the process of trading, there is no need to think about entering trading through the back door because it is always risky.