Freelancer is blackmailing me, what should I do?

[abozanona]

I posted a job on freelancer recently looking for someone to increase my website speed to above 90% https://www.upwork.com/ab/applicants/1117350583768629248/job-details and started working with a client.

I contacted my website hosting support and they adviced me to created a staging website(a clone of the original one), and give the freelancer access to it via ftp and make the necesary modifications, and when he's done copy his work to the original website, and that's what I did.

The freelancer didn't complete the job, he increased the speed on desktop for home page to about 100%, but for mobile it was below 60%. and for other pages in the website the page was about 70% for desktop and desastorus for mobile.

I told the client that this is not what I asked for and told him that I can pay him more money if he needs. but his respond was that this is the best thing he can do and I should transfer him the money because he worken for me. He doesn't care that I'm going to hire somebody else to make the job and is blaming the website that it has a lot of images in it even though I showed him websites that looks very similar to my website and has speed above 90%.

so i have try for mobile its not increasing more so please close this job and pay me
this is max that i can do for you

That what he keeps saying to me!

I told him that I won't pay him so he told me that he has all my website links and data, and that he has a copy of them after I gave him an ftp access to a clone website, and he will use them for evil things and maybe evil things for my website, unless I pay him at least half of the price we agreed on!

and now when I open the conversation between us I see that he has deleted a lot of the messages he sent to me.

How can I handle this situation, and where can I report this freelancer?

[f_maken]

Request for a refund and get another developer, There are thousands f us in upwork Just get another one and hire 

[40b77e4c · Accepted solution]

Open Dispute. For security also contact Upwork Support and open a ticket.