Certainly money is important up to a certain point.
There have been many analysts who have written articles with titles like, "Is Trump Running A False Flag Campaign", "Is Donald Trump A Democratic Secret Agent", "Is Trump Working For Hillary"...
Such an outcome would mean the end of the Republican Party, as its only role was to get a candidate from another party elected.
Voters will revolt and ask: how could the Republican leadership have been duped to let Trump get all the advantages from the very start, and not say anything about it?
Why let Trump run as an independent at the end of the electoral process, when they could have easily come out and say from the very start that Trump does not represent in any way the Republican party?
Moreover, it would be an irreparable blow to Trump's reputation and character: a con artist whose main goal was to get Clinton elected and in the process fooled his own voters.
Such a simplistic scenario does not make sense at all: it could have been easily prevented by the Republican leadership from the very start.
Trump's role is to prepare the way for someone else, and one of the best and honorable ways to exit would be a brokered convention, where Trump will hit a roadblock: the very complexity of the republican electoral process (party rules, the way delegates are allocated to each state, the bonus delegates, and much more).