The weirdest thing is he tried to send me a dollar worth of BTC (maybe as a bribe?

) and I sent the output back to him.
not saying that bribing someone is okay, but a one dollar bribe is an insult.
but what do you expect from someone like that.
Sorry OP, looks like you got screwed.
i really hope they are just dealing with management issues or something in the background, and OP will get his money eventually, but thinking that would be naive.
@PaPoc since they clearly have no intention of paying, you should consider creating a type 3 flag against them:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=trust;addflag=3687633this may or may not help you get your money back, but it will help prevent them from scamming others here in the forum.