My Ex-employer Had A Sketchy Way To Pay Me..

To preface this message, I sell Solar at a call center remotely and was hired on as a W-2 employee the hourly wage was set at $25 an hour and the commission could be as high as I sold a deal at the first few weeks of working at this company. I would be making around 1000 bucks per week in a months time I had netted around 4000 bucks. Now where this gets sketchy is when I sold my first deal. I was expecting a check for roughly 4000. When it was pay day I opened up the envelope to discover I got paid $0… I ran up to my boss and asked what this was and if there was an error but he just looked at me and said that I was an hourly advanced W-2 employee. Meaning my hourly pay would get clawed back anytime I sold a deal. So if I went on a 2 month dry streak (8k net) and sold a deal at the end of that period expecting to make 5k I really would be sitting 3k in the hole. The only time you would be making money is if you were positive. So most of the people that closed there would be relying off of these deals to stick and if they didn’t the boss would cut you if you were -20k or more. I didn’t have that big of a problem staying positive however I am upset that I was not getting paid my hourly pay. Most of the people refused to clock in after these findings.

Is this legal? Why or why not?