If he's not in the same country as you or you didn't work through some 3rd party site, almost certainly not.

There are risks out there but I don't agree you should normally refuse payment until you see something concrete - that way the developer is scared he'll get screwed when you refuse to pay. That happens too.

However agreeing some set of milestones is sensible. Or you can work pay-per-hour, but demand the developer gives you up-to-date access to the latest version.

Ultimately, don't hire people without doing a little due diligence first. Chat over MSN, Skype or the phone.

Sorry you've got burned. Sadly I don't think there's too much you can do other than threaten legal action and hope he is scared. If you have a contact telephone number or better an address, it's going to sound more likely you might actually turn up on his doorstep.

Sorry to hear you getting done over (robbed) like this.

What I'd recommend to avoid this kind of thing in future is to join some business and social networking sites that have regional facilities/connections - I belong to linkedin and ecademy for example from there you can drill down a bit more by getting to know the movers and shakers in each industry, who runs a professional business and who can be trusted with your cash.

It's still not water tight, but if a person / business is willing to put their reputation on the line in public and they are recommended by business people you know run established businesses themselves, you won't be at a loss like this, as you'd be plugged into a collective of people that could help you through this kind of thing - even if it's recommending a good lawyer.

best of luck

zara x

a bit of the record, but I never pay people in advance. And I try not to pay them on a hour base. Always fix project prise and when it's don, he get the money. Thats contractor live :)

If it's big project that takes longer, go for milestones. best philipp

PS: for getting the cheapest website visit weebly.com AWESOME service.

Depending on which outsourcing site you used, if any, and whether or not both of you (you and developer) agreed to escrow to be paid through the site and not off site. You're going to have to hit the pavement running to find out this guy's whereabouts, if he is located state side. If he's overseas, you need to notify the customer service of the outsourcing site which you use, if you in fact did use an outsourcing site, that you've been defaulted. So they can take appropriate action to freeze his account and not dispense any monies to him if he hasn't already withdrawn monies and ran off to another freelancing site to run & try the same game on somebody else.

Otherwise contact your bank if you used a credit card to pay him to contest & dispute the charges against the services that he delivered. So that they can go to work on their end and research to get the money back from his bank, if he does in fact have a bank account his financial institution. ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS do your due diligence to check out someone's background and contact their references. Even if they listed screenshot(s) of website(s) under their profile's portfolio or in an attachment which they proclaim that they had a hand in. Always contact site owner (even if they say they signed a NDA & can't give you this information) to check out their proclamation and find out whether they actually in fact worked on the project & meet the milestones which were set by either the site owner or development agency or company that hired them on site owner's behalf.

Read their past working history & feedbacks (or reviews) and analysis the types of jobs which they were taking on and whether the client was satisfied with the outcome of the work that was delivered to them by the provider. Note: some jobs may have been set to private by the buyer where you can't read the job description that the buyer posted for their job opening. This means that that provider was personally invited by the buyer to interview and work on that job posting, if they accepted the invitation.