Had paid me back larger amounts a couple of times before so I was a bit overconfident.
Flag supported.
It's funny to see that he wrote this in his bitcointalk profile page:
I'm not using telegram due scam attempts.

First red flag for me would be NFT in his username, but to scam someone for $180 and leave the forum is stupid.
I noticed rising number of loan default scams, this has become very risky thing in bitcointalk forum.