1099c Employee Gets Fucked Over

Looooong story short, I got famoosed and conned into joining a startup insurance agency. Quite literally sales employee #1. I was a contractor, got paid informally through Zelle, and paid for all of my own leads. I got recommended a lead vendor, by these people, that scammed me for ≈ 4500.

Now after not even making my money back in the first month I quit. One of my largest clients has cancelled and is going to end up being a chargeback.

No where on the employment contract does it state I owe chargebacks. It doesn’t even have the word. I should’ve never even signed anything; I honestly didn’t have to. The only thing is the Zelle has the clients name. Other than that that’s it. There’s not a single mention of chargebacks in any correspondence whatsoever.

Not to mention the payment structure is not through me. It’s through them. I just get paid advances from them the agency not the carrier.

So should I even pay these scumbags back or should I just block them and go about my way. I could care less about insurance vectors or blacklists. I just don’t want this to fuck me in the future.