Freelancer is blackmailing us after failed scam on Upwork.

[#1]

We had a freelancer on his trail period tried to scam us by logging 89 hours in a week (for your reference, we would charge our clients 8h for the same work!). After a first discussion and paying him for 16h he still logged his hours. When Upwork approved the dispute for the surcharge, he started blackmailing us to still leave a 5 star review on Upwork and still pay him the remaining hours.
He threatens my colleagues he found on our site and is review bombing us wherever he can. He even sends us dubious payment links outside Upwork. It would stop when leaving a 5 star review and paying him the full amount.

We flagged him on Upwork but nothing happens while he clearly violates many ToS of Upwork. Anyone experience with this? 

**Edited for community guidelines**

[#2]

We have a similar problem and Upwork apparently could care less. 

[#3]

What happened?

[#4]

Why didn't you fire this freelancer the first time he logged 89 hours? If you only wanted to pay for 8 hours, you could have limited the work diary so that he was unable to log more time than that, or disabled his ability to add time manually. Unfortunately there are lots of scammers on this website, so you have to vet freelancers before you hire them, and monitor their work diaries after you hire them.

Close the project now and leave a review explaining everything that happened, then block this person from further communication and tell your colleagues to block him as well. Do not engage further and he'll very soon tire of threatening you. If his time was logged last week, you have until tomorrow to dispute; if any time was logged manually or the screen shots show him doing anything other than work on your project, you'll automatically win. Also, click on the three dots to the right of every threatening message and report him to Upwork for his threatening behaviour. I'll also flag your message above so that a moderator can hopefully get customer service to respond.

[#5]

Hi Douglas,

I’m sorry to hear about your experience working with your freelancer. I have shared your post with our team so that we can look into this for you. I encourage you to provide more information about the issue in your support ticket so that our team can assist you accordingly.