[kuzee]

Taking the author's post at face value, I think the solution should be:

Upwork action item: Robin needs to add a new payment instrument to cover the $12000 debt. Freeze Robin's account until then. Any fraud being perpetrated requires Robins involvement, so lean in there.

Upwork action item: tell author that if author hires a lawyer they'll share information necessary for author to pursue a case against Robin.

Author action item: have a lawyer take a look at case vs Upwork and Robin as joint defendants. Make the defendants sort it out.

Kind of am aside, but if Upwork takes zero responsibility and provides no value for the manual payments, seems like all manually tracked work ought to be billed directly between freelancer and buyer. They won't even pursue Robin, the holder of the wrong credit card it seems even when Upwork knows who Robin is.